DIRTY
WORK
The CIA in Western Europe
Caul MrflgpnuApngr
REGISTERED - RETURN RECEIPT REQUESTED
Lyle Stuart Incorporated 31 Miy 1978
120 Enterprise Avenue
Secaucus, New Jersey 07094
Gentlemen:
The Central Intelligence Agency has learned that you may be prepared
to publish a book entitled Dirty Work . It is our understanding that this
book contains the names of many CIA employees , and we have some reason
to believe that the author may himself be a former employee of CIA.
As you may know, all Agency employees execute secrecy agreements
as a condition of their employment . Among other things , these agreements
require that the manuscript of any book relating to the Agency's activities,
based on knowledge acquired in the course of Agency employment, be sub-
mitted to the Agency prior to publication. The purpose of this requirement
is to afford the Agency an opportunity to review such manuscripts to deter-
mine whether or not they contain properly classified information. To be of
any value, and certainly if It is to secure to the Agency the legal rights
created by employee secrecy agreements, that opportunity obviously must
occur prior to publication, before any properly classified information is
placed in the public domain . I should also note that secrecy agreements
between the Agency and its employees have been recognized as valid and
enforceable contracts, and that the obligations undertaken by employees
pursuant to those agreements , to submit manuscripts to the Agency for pre-
publication review , remain binding after the termination of employment .
See United States v. Marchetd . 466 F. 2d 1309 (4th Cir. 1972).
Our Interest at this point is to verify whether in fact the author of any
book you may intend to publish is a former Agency employee, and to inform
you that we would regard the publication of any such book, without prior
Agency review, as a violation of our contractual rights. I have asked John
Greaney , an Associate General Counsel of the CIA, to contact you promptly
concerning this matter, and 1 would ask that you arrange to meet with Mr.
Greaney at your earliest possible convenience.
Sincerely ,
General Counsel
DIRTY
WORK
The CIA in
Western Europe
Edited by Philip Agee
and Louis Wolf
DORSET PRESS
New York
Copyright © C.I. Publication, Inc., 1978
All rights Reserved
First published by Lyle Stuart Inc., 1978
This edition published by Dorset Press,
a division of Marboro Books Corporation,
by arrangement with Lyle Stuart Inc.
1987 Dorset Press
ISBN 0-88029-132-X
Printed in the United States of America
M98765432
Credits and Permissions
"How to Spot a Spook" by John Marks, copyright © 1974 by the
Washington Monthly Co., 1028 Connecticut Ave., NW, Washing-
ton, DC 20036; reprinted with their permission.
"Exposing the CIA" by Philip Agee, copyright © 1975 by The Organ-
izing Committee for a Fifth Estate; reprinted by permission of
Ellen Ray and William H. Schaap.
"Chiefs of Station," copyright © 1975 by The Organizing Committee
for a Fifth Estate; reprinted by permission of Ellen Ray and Wil-
liam H. Schaap.
"Cord Meyer, Superspook" by Godfrey Hodgson, copyright © 1975
by Godfrey Hodgson and the Sunday Times; reprinted by permis-
sion of Harold Matson Company, Inc.
"The CIA in Portugal" by Philip Agee, copyright © 1975 by Philip
Agee; reprinted with his permission.
"Changes in the CIA in Portugal" by Philip Agee, copyright © 1976 by
Philip Agee; reprinted with his permission.
"The Letter to the Athens News" by the Committee of Greeks and
Greek Americans, copyright © 1975 by the Athens News; re-
printed with their permission.
"News Stories: Athens," copyright © 1975, 1976, by the Athens
News; reprinted with their permission.
"The Fifth Estate Responds," copyright © 1975 by The Organizing
Committee for a Fifth Estate; reprinted by permission of Ellen
Ray and William H. Schaap.
"Communique" by The November 17 Revolutionary Organization, in
part copyright © 1976 by Liberation; reprinted with their
permission.
"Who Is Richard Welch?" by Paul Jacobs, copyright © 1976 by Paul
Jacobs; reprinted by permission of the Estate of Paul Jacobs.
"CIA News Management" by Morton H. Halperin, copyright © 1977
by the Washington Post; reprinted with their permission.
"What Uncle Sam Wants to Know About You: The K.I.Q.s" by Philip
Agee and Henry Kissinger, in part copyright © 1977 by Philip
Agee; reprinted with his permission.
"The Corporate Shell Game" by John Marks, copyright © 1976 by the
Washington Post; reprinted with their permission.
"The CIA in Post-Franco Spain" by Eduardo Chamorro, Galo Freixet,
Consuelo Alvarez de Toledo, Nicole Szulc and Steve Weissman,
copyright © 1 976 by Cambio 16; reprinted with their permission.
Translation copyright © 1978 by Steve Weissman; printed with his
permission.
"CIA Operations in Greece" by Yiannis Roubatis and Karen Wynn,
copyright © 1978 by Ta Nea; reprinted with their permission.
"The American Factor in Greece: Old and New" by Philip Agee,
copyright © 1976 by Philip Agee; reprinted with his permission.
"Hello Hugh Montgomery" by Steve Weissman, copyright © 1976
by La Repubblica; reprinted with their permission; English orig-
inal copyright © 1976 by Steve Weissman; printed with his
permission.
"The CIA in Italy: An Interview With Victor Marchetti" by Victor
Marchetti and Panorama, copyright © 1974 by Panorama; re-
printed with their permission. Translation copyright © 1974 by
IDOC-Rome; reprinted with their permission.
"CIA Funding in Italy" by Vittorio Zucconi, copyright © 1976 by La
Stampa; reprinted with their permission. Translation copyright ©
1978 by Steve Weissman; printed with his permission.
"What the CIA Is Looking For in France" by Rene Backmann, Franz-
Olivier Giesbert and Olivier Todd, copyright © 1976 by Le Nouvel
Observateur; reprinted with their permission. Translation
copyright © 1978 by Anna Weissman; printed with her
permission.
"West Germany: An Interview With Philip Agee" copyright © 1976
by Informations Dienst; reprinted with their permission. Transla-
tion copyright © 1978 by C. I. Publications, Inc.; printed with
their permission.
"How CIA Money Took the Teeth Out of British Socialism" by
Richard Fletcher, copyright © 1975 by Richard Fletcher; re-
printed with his permission.
"The CIA Backs the Common Market" by Steve Weissman, Phil
Kelly and Mark Hosenball, copyright © 1975 by Time Out; re-
printed with their permission.
"The CIA Makes the News" by Steve Weissman, copyright © 1976 by
Steve Weissman; reprinted with his permission.
"The CIA in Switzerland" by Philip Agee, copyright © 1976 by Philip
Agee; reprinted with his permission.
"Goodbye Bruce Hutchins" by Jan Guillou and Roger Wallis, copy-
right © 1977 by Jan Guillou and Roger Wallis; reprinted with their
permission. Translation copyright © 1978 by C. I. Publications,
Inc. ; printed with their permission.
"CIA Morale Plummets" by Michael Getler, copyright © 1976 by the
Washington Post; reprinted with their permission.
"Where Do We Go From Here?" by Philip Agee, copyright © 1976,
1977, 1978 by Philip Agee; reprinted with his permission.
"The Deportations of Philip Agee" by Phil Kelly, copyright © 1978 by
Phil Kelly; printed with his permission.
"Turner's 'Born Again' CIA" by CovertAction Information Bulletin,
copyright © 1978 by Covert Action Publications, Inc.; printed
with their permission.
AU Other material copyright © 1978 by C. I. Publications, Inc.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I WOULD like TO thank Steven Weissman, Phil Kelly, Karl Van
Meter, Angela Camargo Seixas, Ellen Ray and Chris Farley, by
name, and all the other counterspies around the world who cannot
be named, for their invaluable assistance in bringing this book to
completion. I want to express my gratitude to the courteous and
helpful staff of the National Archives in Washington and of the
British Museum in London, who have helped make my research
less tedious. And I would like particularly to thank Bill Schaap for
his efforts and good judgement while working on the first half of
the book, as well as for his patience and good humor in abiding
With me during the final days.
I must also extend my deep appreciation to Lyle Stuart — a
target in his own right of the American intelligence establishment
— for having the courage to publish this book. I give special
thanks to Arthur Smith, our editor, without whose knowing coun-
sel and attention to detail the book couldn't have gotten success-
fully past the manuscript stage.
And most of all, I would like to express for all of us our un-
flinching admiration for Philip Agee, whose perseverance of pur-
pose, whose integrity of research, and whose personal bravery
have been an inspiration to us all.
Louis Wolf
Washington, D.C.
September 1978.
Contents
Editors' Preface
Introduction:
Where Myths Lead to Murder
Philip Agee
In the Beginning
Introduction
How to Spot a Spook
John Marks
Exposing the CIA
Philip Agee
Chiefs of Station
CounterSpy magazine
Cord Meyer: Superspook
Godfrey Hodgson
The CIA in Portugal
Philip Agee
Changes in the CIA in Portugal
Philip Agee
The Turning Point:
The Richard Welch Affair
Introduction
The Letter to the Athens News
The Committee of Greeks and Greek- Americans
News Stories: Athens
The Athens News
The Fifth Estate Responds
The Fifth Estate
Communique
The November 17 Revolutionary Organization
Who Is Richard Welch ?
Paul Jacobs
CIA News Management
Morton H. Halperin
What They Do: How and Why
Introduction
What Uncle Sam Wants To Know About You:
TheK.I.Q.s
Philip Agee and Henry Kissinger
The CIA 's Corporate Shell Game
John Marks
What They Do: Western Europe
Introduction
The CIA in Post-Franco Spain
Cambio 16
CIA Operations in Greece
Yiannis Roubatis and Karen Wynn
The American Factor in Greece: Old and New
Philip Agee
Hello Hugh Montgomery
Steve Weissman 165
The CIA in Italy: An Interview With Victor
Marchetti
Victor Marchetti and Panorama 168
What the CIA Is Looking For in France
Rene Backmann, Franz-Olivier Giesbert and
Olivier Todd 174
West Germany: An Interview with Philip Agee
Philip Agee and Informations Dienst 184
How CIA Money Took the Teeth Out of British
Socialism
Richard Fletcher 188
The CIA Backs the Common Market
Steve Weissman, Phil Kelly and Mark Hosenball 201
The CIA Makes the News
Steve Weissman 204
The CIA in Switzerland
Philip Agee 211
Goodbye Bruce Hutchins
Jan Guillou and Roger Wallis 215
Conclusion
Introduction
243
CIA Morale Plummets
Michael Getler
245
Where Do We Go From Here?
Philip Agee
250
The Deportations of Philip Agee
Phil Kelly
286
Turner 's "Born Again ' ' CIA
CovertAction Information Bulletin
301
Editors'
Preface
Defectors are the scourge of any intelligence agency, and for
years Central Intelligence Agency "case officers" and their
counterparts in other countries have made a deadly game of
wooing each other to defect and to bring their secrets with them.
But ever since the late 1960s and the Vietnam War, the CIA —
indeed, the entire American government — has faced an even
more dangerous threat. Several of the brightest agents have quit
in disgust and, instead of defecting to the Soviets (which is the
way the game is supposed to be played), they have told their
secrets to the world, and especially to the American people.
Daniel Ellsberg, a former U.S. Defense Department official,
openly published The Pentagon Papers. Victor Marchetti, a top
aide to the CIA's Deputy Director, joined with former State
Department intelligence officer John Marks, to write The CIA
and the Cult of Intelligence. Philip Agee wrote his Inside the
Company: A CIA Diary. John Stockwell sent his open letter to
Stansfield Turner and authored a book, In Search of Enemies;
13
14
Editors'' Preface
Frank Snepp has exposed the last days of U.S. rule in Saigon;
and several other intelligence veterans have testified before
Congress or given their stories to eager journalists. We can un-
doubtedly expect more revelations from some of the 800-odd
Agency personnel who are being fired by the new Director of the
CIA.
Even worse, many of the new "defectors" are continuing to
use their skills to help the CIA's victims, as individual investiga-
tors and through various publications. Even recent books by
pro-CIA spokesmen, now retired from the Agency, provide val-
uable additional information on how and through whom secret
intervention abroad works.
And that is what really bothers the Agency.
Take, for example, the case of an earlier Who's Who in the
CIA — a little red book published in 1968 in East Germany by Dr.
Julius Mader. At the time, most people generally suspected that
the book came from East German intelligence, if not directly
from the Soviets, and the CIA could easily write the whole
business off as an enemy operation. Besides, the book made too
many mistakes. Several of those named turned out to be straight
diplomats, and worse. Dr. Mader included the names of several
prominent politicians — such as the late Hubert Humphrey and
Eugene McCarthy — who, whatever their faults, had only pass-
ing contacts with the CIA.
The new effort to unmask CIA people, inspired by the new
American counterspies, presents the Agency with an entirely
different kettle of fish. Instead of a little red book published
somewhere in Eastern Europe, we have an avalanche of articles
in a wide array of generally commercial newspapers and maga-
zines, written by an even more varied assortment of indepen-
dent journalists and documented by official U.S. government
publications. A massive international conspiracy? No, just the
result of a simple method that allows anyone in the world to see
for themselves Who's Who in the CIA.
No wonder the CIA is worried.
The present volume attempts to trace the impact of the new
counterspies from the 1974 article showing "How to Spot a
Spook" to a summary of what has since appeared in the Euro-
pean press on the CIA in Western Europe.
But the effort to unmask the CIA's personnel and their opera-
tions is continuing and expanding beyond the scope of this vol-
ume. Researchers in Paris, London, and Washington have al-
Editors' Preface
15
ready amassed some 40,000 pages of documentation from State
Department publications, U.S. Embassy personnel lists, diplo-
matic lists of foreign ministries abroad, and other perfectly
"overt" sources. They are now assembling these documents in a
global index of CIA operations personnel that will be available
to every interested scholar, historian, journalist, and political
activist who seeks to oppose secret intervention by the CIA.
The researchers also plan a continuing program to distribute
regular bulletins worldwide which will report personnel trans-
fers and new assignments. This effort will also include exposure
of the CIA's attempts to carry out secret activities through its
cooperating foreign intelligence services around the world, and
the similar operations of multinational corporations.
The fi eld i s wide open and begging f or organization . Collection
of names and organizations for indexing, storage, and retrieval
on the CIA's penetrations of trade unions, political parties, me-
dia, churches, student groups, and all the plethora of past and
present covert action operations is now under way and expand-
ing. An international "CIA Watch" is really possible. No one
who wants a say in his or her political, social, or economic
situation need be intimidated through fear of secret agencies.
Demystification of the CIA and its allied agencies comes through
exposure, and the past several years have given us confidence,
knowhow, and great optimism.
We hope this volume is a worthy continuation of the struggle,
and an opening to an even more effective effort.
PHILIP AGEE
LOUIS WOLF
August, 1978
Introduction:
Where Myths
Lead to Murder
by Philip Agee
Today the whole world knows, as never before, how the U.S.
government and U.S. corporations have been secretly interven-
ing in country after country to corrupt politicians and to promote
political repression. The avalanche of revelations in the mid-
1970s, especially those concerning the CIA, shows a policy of
secret intervention that is highly refined and consistently
applied.
Former President Ford and leading government spokesmen
countered by stressing constantly the need for the CIA to retain,
and to use when necessary, the capability for executing the
kinds of operations that brought to power the military regime in
Chile. Ford even said in public that he believed events in Chile
had been "in the best interests of the Chilean people." 1 And
even with President Carter's human rights campaign there has
[This article was written in London and Amsterdam, late
1977, for this book. It has not previously appeared in print.]
17
18
Philip Agee
been no indication that the CIA has reduced or stopped its sup-
port of repressive dictatorships in Iran, Indonesia, South Korea,
Brazil, and other bastions of "the free world."
The relevations, though, have not only exposed the operations
of the CIA, but also the individual identities — the names, ad-
dresses, and secret histories— of many of the people who ac-
tually do the CIA's work. This book brings together the recent
exposures of those named as CIA employees, and we hope it
will contribute to the growing opposition to what the CIA is and
what it does.
Yet, with all the newly available information, many people
still seem to believe the myths used to justify this secret political
police force. Some of the myths are, of course, actively spread
by my former CIA colleagues; others come from their liberal
critics. But whatever the source, until we lay the myths to rest,
they will continue to confuse people and permit the CIA — liter-
ally — to get away with murder.
Myth Number One: The CIA is primarily engaged in gathering
intelligence information against the Soviet Union.
This is perhaps the CIA's longest-playing myth, going back to
the creation of the Agency in 1947 and the choice of the name
"Central Intelligence Agency." As the Agency's backers ex-
plained the idea to the American Congress, afraid even in those
early days of getting dragged into unwanted foreign adventures,
the CIA was needed to find out what a possible enemy was
planning in order to protect the United States from a surprise
attack. Americans at the time still shared a vivid memory of the
unexpected Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor, and with the likeli-
hood that the new enemy — the Soviet Union — would soon have
atomic bombs, no one could really doubt the need to know if and
when an attack might come.
The real success in watching the Soviets, however, came from
technological breakthroughs like the U-2 spy plane and spy-in-
the-sky satellites, and the job of strategic intelligence fell in-
creasingly to the technically sophisticated U.S. National Secur-
ity Agency. The CIA played a part, of course, and it also pro-
vided centralized processing of information and data storage.
But in its operations the CIA tended to put its emphasis on
covert action — financing friendly politicians, murdering sus-
pected foes, and staging coups d ' etat.
lntroduction:Where Myths Lead to Murder
19
This deeply involved the Agency in the internal politics of
countries throughout Western Europe, Asia, Africa, the Middle
East, and Latin America, as well as in the Soviet bloc. And even
where CIA officers and agents did act as spies, gathering intelli-
gence information, they consistently used that information to
further their programs of action.
The CIA's operatives will argue that the ultimate goal of dis-
covering Soviet and other governments 1 intentions requires live
spies at work in places like the Kremlin — that the Agency exists
to recruit these spies and to keep them alive and working. A
Penkovsky or two should be on the payroll at all times to keep
America safe from Russian adventures. This argument may in-
fluence some people, because, theoretically, spy satellites and
other forms of monitoring only give a few minutes' warning
whereas a person in the right place can report on decisions as
soon as they are made, giving perhaps days or weeks of warning.
Such a spy might also be of great value for the normal conduct
of relations — whether in negotiations, cooperation, or confron-
tation.
Nevertheless, the vast CIA effort to recruit officials of impor-
tance in the Soviet Foreign Ministry, Defense Ministry, KGB,
and GRU has never had significant success. There have indeed
been defections, but these, I was told in the CIA, had nothing to
do with the elaborate traps and snares laid out by the CIA
around the world. They resulted from varying motivations and
psychological pressures operating on the official who defected.
In this respect, the CIA's strengthening of repressive foreign
security services, necessary for laying out the snares (telephone
tapping, travel control, observation posts, surveillance teams,
etc.), can scarcely be justified by the nil recruitment record.
Today, notwithstanding recent "reforms," the CIA remains
primarily an action agency— doing and not just snooping. Theirs
is the grey area of interventionist action between striped-pants
diplomacy and invasion by the Marines, and their targets in most
countries remain largely the same: governments, political par-
ties, the military, police, secret services, trade unions, youth
and student organizations, cultural and professional societies,
and the public information media In each of these, the CIA
continues to prop up its friends and beat down its enemies, while
its goal remains the furthering of U.S. hegemony so that Ameri-
can multinational companies can intensify their exploitation of
the natural resources and labor of foreign lands.
20
Philip Agee
Of course this has little to do with strategic intelligence or
preventing another Pearl Harbor, while it has a lot to do with the
power of certain privileged groups within the United States and
their friends abroad. The CIA spreads the myth of "intelligence
gathering" in order to obscure the meaning of what the Agency
is really doing.
MythNumberTwo: The major problem is lack of control; that is,
the CIA is a "rogue elephant. "
This myth comes not from the CIA, but from its liberal critics,
many of whom seem to believe that all would be well if only
Congress or the President would exercise tighter control. Yet,
for all the recent horror stories, one finds little evidence that a
majority in Congress want the responsibility for control, while
the executive branch continues to insist — rightly — that the
Agency's covert action operations have, with very few excep-
tions, followed the orders of successive presidents and their
National Security Councils. As former Secretary of State Kis-
singer told Representative Otis Pike's Intelligence Investigating
Committee, "Every operation is personally approved by the
President." 2
For its part the Pike committee concluded in its official report,
first published in "leaked" form by the Village Voice, that "all
evidence in hand suggests that the CIA, far from being out of
control has been utterly responsive to the instructions of the
President and the Assistant to the President for National Secur-
ity Affairs." 3
So the problem is said to be with the presidents — Democratic
and Republican — who, over the past 30 years, have given the
green light to so many covert operations. But why were the
operations necessary? And why secret? The operations had to
be secret, whether they involved political bribes, funding of
anti-Communist journals, or fielding of small armies, because in
every case they implied either government control of sup-
posedly non-governmental institutions or violation of treaties
and other agreements. In other words, hypocrisy and corrup-
tion. If the government was going to subvert free, democratic,
and liberal institutions, it would have to do so secretly.
There is, however, a more basic reason for the secrecy — and
for the CIA. Successive administrations — together with Ameri-
can-based multinational corporations — have continually de-
lntroduction:Where Myths Lead to Murder
21
manded the freest possible access to foreign markets, labor,
agricultural products, and raw materials. To give muscle to this
demand for the "open door," recent presidents have taken in-
creasingly to using the CIA to strengthen those foreign groups
who cooperate — and to destroy those who do not. This has been
especially clear in countries such as Chile under Allende, or Iran
20 years earlier under Mossadegh, where strong nationalist
movements have insisted on some form of socialism to ensure
national control of economic resources.
The CIA's covert action operations abroad are not sui generis.
They happen because they respond to internal U.S. require-
ments. We cannot wish them away through fantasies of some
enlightened President or Congress who would end American
subversion of foreign peoples and institutions by the wave of a
wand. Not surprisingly, the U.S. Senate rejected by a very wide
margin a legislative initiative that would have prohibited covert
action programs by the CIA.
Only prior radical change within the U.S., change that will
eliminate the process of accumulating the value of foreign labor
and resources, will finally allow an end to secret intervention
abroad. Until then, we should expect more intervention by the
CIA and multinational corporations — not less. Increasingly im-
portant will be the repressive capabilities of the Agency's
"sister" services abroad.
Myth Number Three: Weakening the CIA opens wider the door
for Soviet expansion and eventual world domination.
This myth is peddled especially hard at times when liberation
movements make serious gains. Former President Ford and Dr.
Kissinger used it frequently during the CIA's ill-fated interven-
tion in Angola, and we continue to hear it again as liberation
movements seek Soviet and Cuban help in their struggles against
the apartheid policies of the white Rhodesians and South
Africans.
The problem for America, however, is not "Soviet expan-
sionism," despite all the anticommunism with which we are in-
doctrinated practically from the cradle. The problem, rather, is
that the American government, preeminently the CIA, continues
to intervene on the side of "friends" whose property and privi-
lege rest on the remnants of archaic social systems long since
discredited. The political repression required to preserve the old
22
Philip Agee
order depends on American and other Western support which
quite naturally is turning more and more people against the Un-
ited States — more effectively, for sure, than anything the KGB
could ever concoct.
As Senator Frank Church explained in an interview on British
television, "I'm apt to think that the Russians are going to
choose [sides] better than we will choose nine times out of ten.
After all we're two hundred years away from our revolution;
we're a very conservative country." 4
When searching for people contributing to Soviet expansion-
ism and to the eventual isolation of the United States, the finger
must point at the CIA and at those who make the policy exe-
cuted by the CIA.
Myth Number Four: Those who attack the CIA, especially those
who have worked in the intelligence community, are traitors,
turncoats, or agents of the KGB.
This has been the Agency's chief attack on me personally, and
I'm certain that the fear of being tarred with the same brush is
keeping many CIA veterans from voicing their own opposition.
But as with earlier efforts to find the "foreign hand" in the
American antiwar movement, the CIA has failed to produce a
shred of evidence that any of its major American (or European)
critics are in the service of any foreign power. The reader will
also see that the articles and authors appearing in this book are
far too diverse and spontaneous to have been "orchestrated,"
either by the KGB or by some other person or institution. The
KGB no doubt appreciates the Agency's indirect compliments,
but revulsion alone toward what the CIA is and does has been a
quite sufficient stimulus.
Would-be "reformers" of the CIA have also discovered how
the Agency reacts to criticism. According to Representative
Pike, the CIA's Special Counsel threatened to destroy Pike's
political career. In a conversation with Pike's chief investigative
staff person, the Special Counsel was quoted thus: "Pike will pay
for this [directing the vote to approve the committee report on
the CIA] — you wait and see. I'm serious. There will be political
retaliation. Any political ambitions in New York that Pike had
are through. We will destroy him for this." 5
CIA veterans must not be intimidated by the Agency's false
and unattributed slander. We have a special responsibility for
lntroduction:Where Myths Lead to Murder
23
weakening this organization. If put at the service of those we
once oppressed, our knowledge of how the CIA really works
could keep the CIA from ever really working again. And though
the CIA will brand us as "traitors," people all over the world,
including in the United States, will respond, as they have al-
ready, with enthusiastic and effective support.
Myth Number Five: Naming individual CIA officers does little to
change the Agency, and is done only to expose innocent individu-
als to the threat of assassination.
, Nothing in the anti-CIA effort has stirred up more anger than
the publishing of the names and addresses of CIA officials in
foreign countries, especially since the killing of the CIA Station
Chief in Athens, Richard Welch. CIA spokesmen — and journals
such as the Washington Post — were quick to accuse me and
CounterSpy magazine of having "fingered" Welch for the "hit,"
charging that in publishing his name, we were issuing "an open
invitation to kill him." 6 The Agency also managed to exploit
Welch's death to discredit and weaken those liberals in Congress
who wanted only to curtail some of the Agency's more obvious
abuses. The second section of this book makes abundantly clear
that CounterSpy had nothing to do with the Welch killing.
The result of the Agency's manipulations isn't hard to predict.
The CIA, for all its sins, came out of the recent investigations
strengthened by the Ford "reforms," while the Congress may
attempt to pass an official secrets act that will make it a crime for
any present or former government official ever again to blow the
whistle by making public classified information. No more Penta-
gon Papers. No more Watergate revelations. No more CIA
Diaries.
Nonetheless, the naming goes on. More and more CIA people
can now be held personally accountable for what they and the
Agency as an institution do — for the real harm they cause to real
people. Their military coups, torture chambers, and terrorism
cause untold pain, and their backing of multinational corpora-
tions and local elites helps push millions to the edge of starva-
tion, and often beyond. They are the Gestapo and SS of our
time, and as in the Nuremberg Trials and the war in Vietnam,
they cannot shed their individual responsibility simply because
they were following a superior's orders.
But apart from the question of personal responsibility, the
24
Philip Agee
CIA remains a secret political police, and the exposure of its
secret operations — and secret operatives — remains the most ef-
fective way to reduce the suffering they cause. Already a hand-
ful of journalists and former intelligence officers have managed
to reveal the names and addresses of hundreds of CIA people,
and even the Washington Post — which condemns us for doing it
— has admitted that our efforts added greatly to the CIA's grow-
ing demoralization. We also noticed from our own investigations
that the Agency was forced to step up its security precautions
and to transfer many of those named to other posts. All of this
disrupts and destabilizes the CIA, and makes it harder for them
to inflict harm on others.
Of course, this book will again raise the cry that we are
"trying to get someone killed." But, as it happens, violence is
not really needed. By removing the mask of anonymity from
CIA officers, we make it difficult for them to remain at overseas
posts. We hope that the CIA will have the good sense to shift
these people to the increasingly smaller number of safe posts,
preferably to a desk inside the CIA headquarters at Langley,
Virginia. In this way the CIA will protect the operatives named
— and also the lives of their potential victims.
From the old song and dance of the "intelligence gathering"
to the claim that "those who expose are the murderers," these
five myths won't simply vanish. The CIA — and its allies — will
continue to propagate them, and the CIA's critics will have to
respond. We must increasingly expose these myths and the
crimes they cover up.
But besides debating, there is much more that we can do —
especially in furthering the exposure of the Agency and its se-
cret operatives. The CIA probably has no more than 5,000 offi-
cers experienced in running clandestine operations and, as this
book suggests, it should be possible to identify almost all of
those who have worked under diplomatic cover at any time in
their careers. While this volume lists mainly those named as CIA
operatives in Europe, we hope additional volumes can be pub-
lished on the CIA's people in other areas. All that is required is a
continuing effort — and a novel form of international coopera-
tion. Here's how:
1. In each country a team of interested people,
including journalists, should obtain a list of all the
Americans working in the official U.S. Mission:
lntroduction:Where Myths Lead to Murder
25
the Embassy, consulates, AID offices, and other
U.S. installations. This list can be acquired
through a friend in the host Foreign Ministry, in
the American Embassy — or by other means.
2. The team should then get past editions of the
necessary public documents — U.S. Foreign Ser-
vice Lists and Biographic Registers (both pub-
lished by the Department of State) from a local
library, and the Diplomatic List and Consular
List published regularly by every Foreign Minis-
try. The Diplomatic and Consular Lists will con-
tain the name and addresses of the higher ranking
members of the official mission, including some
of the CIA people.
3. Check the names as suggested in the various
articles in this book, especially John Marks'
"How to Spot a Spook." Watch carefully for
persons carried on the Foreign Ministry's Diplo-
matic and Consular Lists, but who are missing
from the recent Biographic Registers and Foreign
Service Lists. Most of these will be CIA people
purposely left off the State Department lists.
4. After narrowing down the list of likely sus-
pects, check them with us c/o C. I. Publications,
Inc., P.O. Box 50053, F Street Station, Washing-
ton, D.C., 20004, and with other similarly or-
iented groups.
5. Once the list is fully checked, publish it. Then
organize public demonstrations against those
named — both at the American Embassy and at
their homes — and, where possible, bring pressure
on the government to throw them out. Peaceful
protest will do the job. And when it doesn't,
those whom the CIA has most oppressed will find
other ways of fighting back.
Naturally, as new CIA people replace the old, it will be neces-
sary to repeat the process, perhaps every few months. And as
26
Philip Agee
the campaign spreads, and the CIA learns to correct the earlier
and more obvious flaws in its use of State Department cover, we
will have to develop new ways to spot them. Already the Agency
has gotten the State Department to restrict circulation of the all-
important Biographic Register, and it is likely that the Adminis-
tration will in future place more of its people under cover of the
Department of Defense (for example, in military bases, and in
Military Assistance Groups), the Drug Enforcement Agency,
and the multinational corporations.
In rare cases, the CIA may even attempt changing the identi-
ties of certain operatives. Nonetheless, the CIA will always
need a secure base in embassies and consulates to keep its files
and communications facilities, and there are many ways to iden-
tify the CIA people in these missions without relying on public
documents.
Within the United States, people can help this campaign by
supporting the groups struggling to stop covert intervention
abroad. There is also the need for continuing research into cur-
rent CIA operations, and new programs to identify and keep
track of all the FBI special agents and informers, military intelli-
gence personnel, and the Red Squads and SWAT groups of local
and state police departments.
Together, people of many nationalities and varying political
beliefs can cooperate to weaken the CIA and its surrogate intelli-
gence services, striking a blow at political repression and eco-
nomic injustice. The CIA can be defeated. The proof can be
seen from Vietnam to Angola, and in all the other countries
where liberation movements are rapidly gaining strength.
It is hoped that this book will aid this struggle, together with
the struggle for socialism in the United States itself.
Notes
1. News conference, September 16. 1974, reported in the International Herald
Tribune. September 18. 1974.
2. Testimony by Kissinger to House Select Committee on Intelligence, Octo-
ber31, 1975, as reported in the International Herald Tribune, November 1-2, 197S.
3. Report of the House Select Committee on Intelligence, as reported in the
Village Voice. February 16. 1976. p. 84.
4. "Newsday." BBC-2 television. February 18. 1975.
3. Hon. Otis Pike, speech on floor of U.S. House of Representatives on
March 9, 1976, as reported in the International Herald Tribune. March 1 1. 1976.
6. Editorial, Washington Post, as published in the International Herald Tri-
bune. December 30. 1975.
In the
Beginning
Introduction
Where did the effort to unmask the CIA begin?
The CIA would like to throw the blame on some coordinated
campaign by Philip Agee or CounterSpy magazine, and in their
less modest moments, perhaps, Agee or CounterSpy might ap-
preciate the compliment, since they did make a major contribu-
tion. But, in fact, one of the most important beginnings came
when former State Department intelligence officer John Marks
wrote his now-celebrated "How to Spot a Spook," for the No-
vember 1974 Washington Monthly, the first article in this sec-
tion. Many journalists and former intelligence officers already
knew the rather simple methodology Marks spelled out, and,
strange as it seems, at the time Agee and others felt that Marks
might have made a mistake in making the method public. So
much for coordination.
But, both the moral imperative to name names, of which Agee
speaks, and the inherent news worthiness of the operations, won
out. Agee soon brought out his CIA Diary, in which he revealed
27
28
Introduction
the names of many of his former colleagues. He also published a
commentary on "Exposing the CIA" in CounterSpy. which is
presented here, and in the same issue, CounterSpy presented a
detailed listing of over 100 CIA Chiefs of Station. (This was the
list which included the name of Richard Welch, then in Peru, but
soon to move on to Greece.)
For all its initial effort, however, the "campaign" lacked mo-
mentum; unlike the CIA, with its paid journalists and subsidized
news services, neither Marks nor Agee nor CounterSpy had the
organization to orchestrate a major international campaign.
However, journalists and political activists alike began to see
the value of the method, and the important exposes which were
possible. Godfrey Hodgson's piece on "Cord Meyer: Super-
spook," which ran in the Sunday Times of London, demon-
strated that such items could reach the journalistic establish-
ment. And Philip Agee showed with his letters to the Portuguese
people that the campaign was not simply an academic exercise.
The battle was on.
How to
Spot a Spook
by John Marks
Both the Soviet and American intelligence establishments seem
to share the obsession that the other side is always trying to bug
them. Since the other side is, in fact, usually trying, our techni-
cians and their technicians are constantly sweeping military in-
stallations and embassies to make sure no enemy, real or imag-
ined, has succeeded. One night about ten years ago, a State
Department security officer, prowling through the American em-
bassy in Santiago, Chile, in search of Communist microphones,
found a listening device carefully hidden in the office of a senior
"political officer." The security man, along with everyone else
in the embassy, knew that this particular "political officer" was
actually the Central Intelligence Agency's "Station Chief," or
principal operative in Chile. Bugging his office would have in-
deed been a major coup for the opposition. Triumphantly, the
[This article first appeared in the November 1974 issue of
Washington Monthly, Washington, D.C.]
29
30
John Marks
security man ripped the microphone out of the wall — only to
discover later that it had been installed by the CIA station chief
himself.
The reason the CIA office was located in the embassy — as it is
in most of the other countries in the world — is that by presiden-
tial order the State Department is responsible for hiding and
housing the CIA. Like the intelligence services of most other
countries, the CIA has been unwilling to set up foreign offices
under its own name, so American embassies — and, less fre-
quently, military bases — provide the needed cover. State con-
fers respectability on the Agency's operatives, dressing them up
with the same titles and calling cards that give legitimate diplo-
mats entree into foreign government circles. Protected by diplo-
matic immunity, the operatives recruit local officals as CIA
agents to supply secret intelligence and, especially in the Third
World, to help in the Agency's manipulation of a country's inter-
nal affairs.
The CIA moves its men off the diplomatic lists only in Ger-
many, Japan, and other countries where large numbers of Amer-
ican soldiers are stationed. In those countries, the CIA's com-
mand post is still in the U.S. Embassy, but most of the CIA
personnel are under military cover. With nearly 500,000 U.S.
troops scattered around the world, the CIA "units" buried
among them do not attract undue attention.
In contrast, it is difficult for the CIA to dwell inconspicuously
within the American diplomatic corps, since more than a quarter
of the 5,435 employees who purportedly work for State overseas
are actually with the CIA. In places such as Argentina, Bolivia,
Burma, and Guyana, where the Agency has special interests and
projects, there are about as many CIA operatives under cover of
substantive embassy jobs as there are legitimate State employ-
ees. The CIA also places smaller contingents in the ranks of
other U.S. government agencies which operate overseas, partic-
ularly AID's police training program in Latin America. [Edi-
tors' Note: After much public outcry about U.S. exportation
of repression via massive supplying of police equipment and
training foreign police in methods of interrogation and torture
since 1961, AID's Office of Public Safety was closed down by
Congress in July 1975.]
What is surprising is that the CIA even bothers to camouflage
its agents, since they are still easily identifiable. Let us see why
the embassy cover is so transparent:
How to Spot a Spook
31
• The CIA usually has a separate set of offices in the
Embassy, often with an exotic-looking cipher lock on the out-
side door. In Madrid, for example, a State Department source
reports that the Agency occupied the whole sixth floor of the
Embassy. About 30 people worked there; half were disguised as
"Air Force personnel" and half as State "political officers."
The source says that all the local Spanish employees knew who
worked on what floor of the Embassy and that visitors could
figure out the same thing.
• CIA personnel usually stick together. When they go to
lunch or to a cocktail party or meet a plane from Washington,
they are much more likely to go with each other than with legiti-
mate diplomats. Once you have identified one, you can quickly
figure out the rest.
• The CIA has a different health insurance plan from
the State Department. The premium records, which are unclassi-
fied and usually available to local employees, are a dead give-
away.
• The Agency operative is taught early in training that
loud background sounds interfere with bugging. You can be
pretty sure the CIA man in the Embassy is the one who leaves
his radio on all the time.
• Ironically, despite the State Department's total re-
fusal to comment on anything concerning the CIA, the Depart-
ment regularly publishes two documents, the Foreign Service
List and the Biographic Register, which, when cross-checked,
yield the names of most CIA operatives under embassy cover.
Here is how it works:
America's real diplomats have insisted on one thing in dealing
with the CIA: that the corps of Foreign Service Officers (FSO)
remain pure. Although there are rumors of exceptions, CIA per-
sonnel abroad are always given the cover rank of Foreign Ser-
vice Reserve (FSR) or Staff (FSS) officers— not FSO. Of course,
there are some legitimate officials from the State Department,
AID, and USIA who hold FSR and FSS ratings, so care must be
taken to avoid confusing these people with the spooks.
To winnow out the spooks, you start by looking up in the
Foreign Service List under the country in question — for exam-
ple, China. The letters in the third column from the left signify
the man or woman's personnel status and the number denotes
his or her rank. On the China list, David Bruce is an "R-l," or
Reserve Officer of class 1, the highest rank. John Holdridge is a
32
John Marks
regular Foreign Service Officer (FSO) of the same grade, and
secretary Barbara Brooks is a Staff Officer, class 4.
PEKING (U.S. LIAISON OFFICE) (LO)
Bruce David KE
. chief USLO
R-l
5-73
dep chief USLO
O-l
5-73
dep chief USLO
R-l
. sec
S-4
5-73
McKinley Brunson
. spec asst
0-6
5-73
. sec
S-5
5-73
. poloff
0-4
6-73
. sec
S-8
12-73
Lilley James R
. pol off
R-3
. pol on
(J-5
1-15
Horowitz Herbert Eugene .
. econ/cml off
0-3
6-73
. sec
S-7
7-73
. econ/cml off
0-4
4-73
Blackburn Robert R Jr
. admoff
0-3
4-73
. sec
S-6
5-73
Lambert William F
. coms/rec off
R-6
2-74
. coms/rec off
S-2
7-73
Morin Emile F
. gen ser off
0-5
3-72
Peterson Robert D
. coms/rec off
R-6
7-73
Riley Albert D
, coms/rec off
S-5
5-73
Now Holdridge almost certainly can be ruled out as an opera-
tive, simply because he is an FSO. Not much can be told one
way or the other about FSS Brooks because, as is the case with
most secretaries, the State Department does not publish much
information about her. David Bruce might be suspect because of
his "R" status, but a quick glance at the Biographic Register,
which gives a brief curriculum vitae of all State Department
personnel, shows him to be one of the high-level political ap-
pointees who have "R" status because they are not members of
the regular Foreign Service. Similarly, the Register report on
FSR Jenkins shows that he had a long career as an FSO before
taking on the State Department's special assignment in Peking as
an FSR:
Brace, David KE — b Md 2/21/98, m (Evangeline Bell).
Princeton U AB 19. Mem Md bar. US Army 17-19,
42-45 col overseas. PRIV EXPER priv law practice
21-26, mem State legis 24-26, 39-42, with bank-priv bus
How to Spot a Spook
33
28-40, chief rep Am Red Cross (England) 40-41,
GOVT EXPER with Off Strategic Sers 41-45, asst sec
of Com 47-48. ECA Paris R-l chief of mission 5/48.
STATE AEP to France 5/49. Dept under sec of state 2/
52, consult to sec of state 1/53. Paris R-l pol off-US
observer to Interim Comm of EDC, also US rep to
European Coal-Steel Community (Luxembourg) 2/53.
Dept consult to sec of state 1/55. Bonn AEP to Ger-
many 3/57-1 1/59. London AEP to Great Britain 2/61-3/
69. Dept R-l pers rep of Pres with pers rank amb to hd
US del at Paris meetings on Viet-Nam 7/70-4/71. Pe-
king chief liaison off 3/73.
Jenkins, Alfred leSesie— b Ga 9/14/16, m. Emory U
AB 38, Duke U MA 46. US Army 42-46 1st It. PRIV
EXPER prin-supt pub schs 40-J2. STATE Dept FSO
unclass 6/46. Peiping Chin lang-area trainee 9/46, 0-6
1 1/46. Tientsin pol off 7/48, 0-S 4/49. Hong Kong chief
pol sect 7/49. Taipei pol off 7/50, 0-4 6/51. Dept 3/52.
0-3 9/54. Jidda couns, depchief mission 2/55. Dept det
Nat War Coll 8/57, 0-2 2/58, dep dir Off of SE Asian
Aff 6/58, reg plan ad Bu of Far E aff 8/59. Stockholm
couns, dep chief mission 10/61, cons gen 3/62, O-l 3/
63. Dept FS insp 8/65, det Nat Security Counc 7/66,
FS insp 1/69, dir Off of Asian Communist Aff 7/70,
superior honor award 71, dir for People's Rep of
China, Mongolia, Hong Kong-Macao aff 2/73. Peking
dep chief liaison off 4/73. Lang Ger. (w — Martha
Lippiatt).
Note that there are no gaping holes in their career records, nor
did either of these men serve long tours with nameless Pentagon
agencies, nor did they regularly change their status from "R" to
"S" to "GS" (civil service).
Now, for purposes of comparison, examine the record of the
CIA's man in Peking, a "political officer" named James R.
Lilley:
Lilley, James R — b China Am parents 1/15/28, m. Yale
U BA 51. US Army 46-47. GOVT EXPER anal Dept
of Army 51-58. STATE Manila R-6 7/58. Dept 10/60.
Phnom Penh 9/61, R-5 3/63. Bangkok 4/63. Dept 8/64.
Vientiane pol off 6/65. R-4 5/66. S-2 4/68. Hong Kong
5/68, R-4 5/69. Dept 7/70, GS-15 fgn aff off 4/71, R-4
34
John Marks
det lang tmg FSI 7/72-4/73. Lang Fr, Rom. (w— Sally
Booth).
The Foreign Service List provides another clue, in the form of
diplomats 1 official assignments. Of all the jobs real State Depart-
ment representatives perform, political reporting is generally
considered to be the most important. Although genuine FSRs
frequently hold administrative and consular slots, they are al-
most never given the important political jobs. So where an FSR
does appear in the listing with a political job, it is most likely that
the CIA is using the position for cover. There is an exception to
this rule: A comparatively few minority-group members who
have been brought into the Foreign Service as Reserve Officers
under a special program. They are found exclusively in the jun-
ior ranks, and their biographic data is complete in the way the
CIA people's is not.
Finally there is another almost certain tipoff. If an agent is
listed in the Biographic Register as having been an "analyst" for
the Department of the Army (or Navy or Air Force), you can bet
that he or she is really working for the CIA. A search of
hundreds of names found no legitimate State Department per-
sonnel listed as ever having held such a job.
In an embassy like the one in Santo Domingo, the spooks in
the political section outnumber the real FSOs by at least seven
to three:
Political Section
Beyer Joel H
. . . . pol off
R-5
7-72
R-7
9-72
Bumpus James N
.... pol off
0-4
7-72
Chafin Gary E
0-6
8-73
R-3
5-71
Dwiggins Joan H
.... pol off
R-7
3-72
Fambrini Robert L
.... pol off
S-2
6-73
Greig David NJr
.... pol off
R-5
8-71
Guell Janet E
S-8
12-73
S-8
6-73
S-9
2-73
R-6
8-72
Morris Margaret A
.... elk-typist
S-IO
12-73
Pascoe Dorothy L
.... sec
S-7
2-74
Ryan Donald G
.... pol off
R-8
8-73
Williams Albert N
Q-3
7-73
How to Spot a Spook
35
While Donald Ryan is an "R" in the political section, there is
not sufficient data published about him to verify his status.
It was by studying these documents that I learned that the CIA
has sent an operative to Peking. For confirmation, I called the
State Department's ranking China expert, Acting Assistant Sec-
retary of State Arthur Hummel. After I identified myself as a
reporter working on a magazine article and explained where I
had gotten my information, Hummel shouted, "I know what
you're up to and I don't want to contribute. Thank you very
much!" and slammed down the phone.
Another State official confirmed that the decision to send an
operative to Peking was made in early 1973, but declared that
making public the operative's existence could "jeopardize"
Chinese-American relations. Neither this official nor any of his
colleagues seemed willing to consider the notion that the U.S.
government was under no obligation to assign a CIA man there
— or anywhere else, for that matter. The first American mission
to China since 1949 certainly could have been staffed exclusively
with real diplomats if concern about damaging relations were so
high. To have excluded the Agency from Peking, however,
would have gone against a basic axiom of the post- World War II
foreign policy establishment: the CIA follows the flag into
American embassies.
The Chinese government is presumably clever enough to iden-
tify the operative by sifting through the public documents avail-
able. In fact, his arrival may well have been cleared with the
Chinese, who probably wanted reciprocal privileges for their
secret service in Washington. Such are the arrangements the
world's spooks are so fond of working out with each other — the
Soviet KGB and the CIA even exchange names of intelligence
analysts assigned to the other's capital.
Sacrificing "State"
Much to the alarm of a few high State Department officials,
the proportion of CIA to State personnel abroad has been stead-
ily rising in recent years. The precise figures are zealously
guarded, but several State sources confirm the trend. They cite
as the main reason for this tilt toward the CIA a series of govern-
ment-wide cutbacks that have hit State proportionately harder
than the CIA. What troubles State is not, as one career diplomat
put it, "the principle" that State should provide the CIA with
36
John Marks
cover. That is unquestioned, he says. Rather, most legitimate
diplomats do not like being a minority within their own profes-
sion or having the rest of the world confuse them with the CIA's
dirty tricksters. They generally regard themselves as working at
a higher calling.
While the State Department has been comparatively honest in
accepting the personnel cuts ordered by the Johnson and Nixon
administrations, two sources familiar with the CIA budget re-
port that the Agency has done everything possible to escape the
reductions. Traditionally, when outsiders — even Presidents —
have tried to meddle with the Agency's personnel allotment, the
CIA has resisted on "national security" grounds. And when that
argument failed, the CIA resorted to bureaucratic ruses: cutting
out a job and then replacing the person eliminated with a "con-
tract" or "local" employee, who would not show up on the
personnel roster; or sending home a clandestine support officer
— a specialist in things like renting "safe houses," "laundering"
money, and installing phone taps — and then having the same
work done by experts sent out from Washington on "temporary
duty."
Not only does the State Department provide the CIA with
cover, but the Senate — and especially its Foreign Relations
Committee — encourages the current practice of sending over
25% of our "diplomatic" corps abroad under false pretenses.
Every year the Foreign Relations Committee routinely approves
and sends to the full Senate for its advice and consent lists of
"Foreign Service Reserve Officers to be consular officers and
secretaries in the Diplomatic Service of the United States of
America." In 1973, of the 121 names submitted by the State
Department, more than 70 were CIA operatives. According to a
knowledgeable source, the committee is informally told the
number of CIA people on the lists, but "not who they are." No
Senator in memory has publicly objected to being an accomplice
to this cover-building for the CIA.
Just this spring [1974], the State Department took official, if
secret, notice of its declining presence overseas compared to the
CIA when Secretary Henry Kissinger authorized a high-level
study of State-CIA staffing. The Department's top administra-
tor, L. Dean Brown, who had urged the study be made in the
first place, gave the job to Malcolm Toon, a career diplomat
serving as U.S. Ambassador to Yugoslavia. Toon returned to
Washington to compile the top-secret report.
How to Spot a Spook
37
Asking not to be named and refusing to provide the specific
figures, a source close to Kissinger says that Toon's report calls
for a substantial reduction in the number of CIA operatives
abroad under State cover. The source adds that Kissinger has
not made up his mind on the issue.
Kissinger has always acted very carefully where the CIA is
concerned. One of his former aides notes that the Secretary has
regularly treated the Agency with great deference at government
meetings, although he has often been privately scornful of it
afterward. In any case, Kissinger is unquestionably a believer in
the need for the CIA to intervene covertly in other countries'
internal affairs — he was the prime mover behind the Agency's
work against Salvador Allende in Chile. The question of how
much cover State should provide the CIA, however, is chiefly a
bureaucratic one, and is not basic to Kissinger's foreign policy.
The Secretary therefore will probably not take a definite position
until he sees how much opposition the CIA will be able to stir up
in the White House and in the congressional subcommittees that
supposedly oversee the Agency.
The CIA has lost no time in launching its counteroffensive. At
a July 19 off-the-record session with key Democratic congres-
sional aides, Carl Duckett, the CIA's Deputy Director for Intelli-
gence, complained about the reductions recommended by the
Toon report. According to a source who was present, Duckett
said that, even without further embassy cuts, the CIA now
doesn't have enough people overseas.
CIA officials must be especially concerned about Toon's rec-
ommendations, since in countries where there are no U.S. mili-
tary bases, the only alternative to embassy cover is "deep," or
nonofficial, cover. American corporations operating overseas
have long cooperated in making jobs available to the CIA and
would probably continue to do so. Also, the Agency would prob-
ably have to make more use of smaller firms where fewer people
would know of the clandestine connection. Two examples of
this type are:
• Robert Mullen and Company, the Washington-based
public relations concern for which E. Howard Hunt worked
after he left the CIA and before the break-in at Democratic
National Headquarters. Mullen provided CIA operatives with
cover in Stockholm, Mexico City, and Singapore, and in 1971 set
up a subsidiary in cooperation with the CIA called Interprogres,
Ltd. According to a secret Agency document released with the
38
John Marks
House Judiciary Committee's impeachment evidence, "At least
two [CIA] overseas assets have tangential tasks of promoting
the acceptance of this company as a Mullen subsidiary."
• Psychological Assessment Associates, Inc., a Wash-
ington psychological consulting firm specializing in behavioral
research and analysis. By the admission of its president John
Gittinger, most of the company's business since it was founded
in 1957 by three ex-CIA psychologists has come from Agency
contracts. The firm had two "representatives" in Hong Kong, at
least until June of this year [1974].
Unless their cover is blown, companies of this sort and opera-
tives who work for them cannot be linked to the U.S. govern-
ment. But the Agency has learned over the years that it is much
more difficult and expensive to set up an operative as a business-
man (or as a missionary or newsman) than to put him in an
embassy. As a "private" citizen, the operative is not automati-
cally exposed to the host country's key officials and to foreign
diplomats, nor does he have direct access to the CIA communi-
cations and support facilities which are normally housed in em-
bassies. Moreover, as an ex-CIA official explains, "The deep
cover guy has no mobility. He doesn't have the right passport.
He is subject to local laws and has to pay local taxes. If you try
to put him in an influential business job, you've got to go through
all the arrangements with the Company."
Who Needs Gumshoes?
Everything argues for having the intelligence agent in the em-
bassy — everything, that is, except the need to keep his existence
secret. The question then becomes whether it is really that im-
portant to keep his existence secret — which, in turn, depends on
how important his clandestine activities are.
Could any rational person, after surveying the history of the
last 20 years, from Guatemala to Cuba to Vietnam — and now
Chile — contend that the CIA's clandestine activities have
yielded anything but a steady stream of disaster? The time has
come to abolish them. Most of the military and economic intelli-
gence we need we can get from our satellites and sensors (which
already provide nearly all our information about Russia's nu-
clear weaponry) and from reading the newspapers and the super-
abundant files of open reports. As for political intelligence —
which is actually an assessment of the intentions of foreign lead-
How to Spot a Spook
39
ers — we don't really need this kind of information from Third
World countries unless we intend to muck about in their internal
affairs. With the Soviet Union or China — countries powerful
enough to really threaten our national security — timely political
intelligence could be a great help. But for the past 25 years we
have relied on open sources and machine-collected intelligence
because our agents have proven incapable of penetrating these
closed societies. There is not enough practical benefit gained
from the CIA's espionage activities to compensate for our na-
tion's moral and legal liability in maintaining thousands of highly
trained bribers, subverters, and burglars overseas as "repre-
sentatives" of our government. The problem of getting good,
accurate, reliable information from abroad is a complicated one,
beyond the scope of this article, but, to paraphrase Mae West,
covert has nothing to do with it.
Exposing
the CIA
by Philip Agee
During the 1960s, when I worked as a CIA operations officer in
Latin America, I often reflected on the exceptional number and
variety of operations that I took over from other officers or
initiated myself. At times, more experienced men observed that
I was fortunate to be gaining experience in "across-the-board"
operations: from political action operations with government
ministers to Communist Party penetration operations, to surveil-
lance teams, telephone tapping, and trade union operations.
One of the keys to my capacity to work on many operations at
once, thereby to contribute in a proportionately greater way to
CIA goals, was the lack of any opposition of significance. In
most of Latin America, indeed in much of the Third World, the
local security forces were penetrated and manipulated by the
CIA — in some cases they were the very creatures of the Agency
[This article first appeared in the Winter 1974/1975 issue of
CounterSpy magazine, published in early 1975 in Washing-
ton, D.C.j
40
Exposing the CIA
41
— in such a manner that they practically never were allowed to
interfere with or jeopardize the (CIA) station's "unilateral"
(i.e., unknown to the local service) operations. Similarly, while
my name appeared from time to time in the local left-wing press
as a CIA officer, no one ever demonstrated hostility to me, pick-
eted my home, threatened me if I didn't leave the country, or
made me feel uncomfortable in some other way. I was allowed
to achieve all the mischief I could, always with impunity, and
restrained only by internal CIA procedures and practices. Offi-
cers experienced in European countries, however, where
greater security precautions and procedures were required, were
able to handle only a fraction of the operations that we "Third
World Officers" could take on.
I used to think that if left-wing Ecuadoreans, Uruguayans, or
Mexicans ever found out what I was really up to, they would
make it impossible for me to remain in their country. Even bour-
geois nationalists would have made life impossible for me. I
wondered if my "friends" on the right and in the "center"
would have been able to protect me. But no one ever bothered
me because no one knew, really, the scope of my work, and of
the overall station's operational programs wherever I was
working.
But times are different now. As each new spate of revelations
of CIA operations occurs, the pattern emerges more clearly. The
1967 revelations, the CIA's support to the Watergate coverup,
the revelations of "destabilization" operations against the Al-
lende government, CIA And The Cult Of Intelligence by John
Marks and Victor Marchetti, my book, and others yet to appear
— all these revelations help to reveal a pattern of CIA support to
minority Third World regimes that inflict terrible repression on
their own people in order to retain power and privilege — coun-
tries that welcome exploitation of their natural resources and
workers by transnational companies. These minority regimes, in
fact, have no other role than to serve their own interests by
serving the interests of foreign, particularly U.S., corporations.
No longer can ignorance of the CIA's operations and of the
purpose and effect of those operations be allowed to delay posi-
tive action to defeat them. Now more than ever, concerned
Americans, together with the Third World peoples victimized by
the CIA and the economic and social injustices that the CIA
enforces, can discover what the CIA is all about.
What can be done to defeat this sinister secret police force?
42
Philip Agee
One effort could be directed toward elaborating a set of indi-
cators which would be based on known types of CIA operations
that have visible effects — the construction of a composite
model, in other words. Such a model might also include non-CIA
factors such as impressions conveyed in U.S. government state-
ments, levels of military and economic aid, levels of credits
from international institutions such as the World Bank, the IMF
(International Monetary Fund), regional development banks, as
well as private financial institutions. Once the model is con-
structed, a search for appropriate indicators in the country of
interest, e.g., Portugal, could proceed. What one might have at
any given moment would be a greater or lesser certainty that
destabilization programs against a country's left-wing and/or na-
tionalist forces are increasing or decreasing. But in the absence
of access to documents or to a participating CIA employee who
wants to talk, such an effort must remain highly speculative.
Other efforts might well be directed toward lobbying against
the CIA and raising public consciousness in the U.S. against this
organization. But given the overwhelming defeat in October
1974 of Senator Abourezk's amendment to prohibit illegal CIA
activity, one cannot be sanguine about effective congressional
restraints on the Agency — the Congress, after all, created the
CIA and gave it autonomy to commit all kinds of crimes in the
name of the American people. Someday, perhaps, the Congress
may include enough fair-minded people to curtail the CIA and
other interventionist agencies, but action should be taken now
by those who are concerned.
The most effective and important systematic efforts to combat
the CIA that can be undertaken right now are, I think, the identi-
fication and exposure of its people working abroad. Working
through careful analysis of the U.S. government employees
country by country abroad, the CIA people can be identified and
exposed through periodic bulletins disseminated to subscribers,
particularly individuals and organizations in the foreign country
in question. Photographs and home addresses in the foreign cap-
ital or cities having consulates should be included. Having this
information, the peoples victimized by the CIA and the eco-
nomic exploitation that the CIA enforces can bring pressure on
their so-often compromised governments to expel the CIA peo-
ple. And, in the absence of such expulsions, which will not be
uncommon, the people themselves will have to decide what they
must do to rid themselves of the CIA.
Some may object that, in the face of such a campaign, the CIA
Exposing the CIA
43
will simply change its cover mechanisms and make identification
more difficult. This will indeed occur, but so many CIA people
can be identified from personal knowledge and past covers al-
ready a part of the public records, that more effective cover will
be difficult and very slow to develop. Meanwhile, important
steps can be taken to weaken the Agency and its support of
injustice.
In October 1974 1 announced the names and addresses in Mex-
ico City of 35 official cover (Embassy) CIA people and two
nonofficial cover people. Probably about ten more nonofficial
cover people were working in Mexico City posing as students,
businessmen, tourists or retired people. Within a few days, both
the Chief of Station, Richard Sampson, and the Deputy Chief of
Station, Jonathan Hanke, were withdrawn from Mexico. Per-
haps others on the list will be withdrawn soon, or expelled, or
forced to leave by the Mexican people. As a former operations
officer, I can assure you that such precipitate withdrawals are
very disruptive and reduce the effectiveness of the whole station
program. Those who remain will have to beware of action by the
Mexican people and will have to install greater security devices
in their operations — thus reducing their capacities.
Similar revelations are going to follow, but I believe this cam-
paign should be organized in a systematic way by concerned
Americans in the U.S., perhaps in the way that certain of the
earlier efforts against the Vietnam War were undertaken. Surely
if one opposed intervention against the Vietnamese people, one
would also have to oppose the lower-level and usually quieter
intervention by the CIA.
This campaign could remove the key to CIA effectiveness in
destabilizing progressive and revolutionary forces seeking social
justice and national dignity in the Third World. That key is se-
crecy, and when it is peeled away, there, standing naked and
exposed for all to see, is the CIA secret policeman, who only
hours before was lurking in the darkness to bribe a military
officer, a student leader, a journalist, a politician, or a trade
unionist. Take away secrecy and the CIA officer becomes
impotent.
We know enough of what the CIA does to resolve to oppose
it. What we should do now is to identify and expose each of the
people who instrument and execute the CIA's programs. People
failed to campaign effectively against the CIA in the past be-
cause the CIA programs and people were unknown. Now that
impediment is being removed.
Chiefs of Station
from CounterSpy magazine
In the wake of revelations about covert operations abroad, and
intelligence operations at home, the Central Intelligence Agency
stands in the middle of a storm of controversy. Members of
Congress and editorial writers are calling for the abolition of
covert operations by the CIA. A handful of congressional com-
mittees and a Presidential Blue Ribbon Panel have promised to
investigate the situation. And the Agency itself is purging the
leftover cold-warriors in its midst. When the ardent breezes
from Capitol Hill wane, knowledgeable insiders claim that gov-
ernment will have responded to public sentiment with stern
promises that future CIA activities will be strictly controlled.
[This article, without byline, first appeared in the Winter
1974/1975 issue of CounterSpy magazine, published in early
1975 in Washington, D C. Several additional Chiefs of Sta-
tion were listed in the subsequent issues of CounterSpy,
December 1975 and Spring 1976. These names are included
in the list.]
44
Chiefs of Station
45
The President and the Director of Central Intelligence, Wil-
liam Colby, oppose those forces that would have covert opera-
tions abolished. Colby admits that abolition would not seriously
impair the national security of the United States. But, they
argue, covert operations give the President a foreign policy op-
tion somewhere between diplomatic posturing and open
intervention.
In fact, covert operations are more than just an option. Since
Congress left a tiny loophole in the National Security Act of
1947, covert operations, and the clandestine network required to
support them, have been used on a literally daily basis to enforce
foreign policy. Covert operations and their support are big busi-
ness, utilizing $550 million of CIA's $750 million annual budget,
and 80% of that agency's employees. And these figures do not
include $50 to $100 million set aside for use by the CIA director
in emergencies, and thousands of "contract employees."
Colby maintains that the current era of detente has brought a
much lower level of covert operations than in past years. Other
sources, primarily foreign newspapers and governments, how-
ever, indicate that covert operations are continuing on a level
comparable to past eras. In recent months allegations have been
made that operations have occurred or are occurring in: Viet-
nam, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Portugal, Spain, Greece, Cy-
prus, Dhofar, Rhodesia, South Africa, Italy, Argentina, Peru,
Venezuela, Ethiopia, and Great Britain. For the present, of
course, all indications of covert activity remain allegations that
are not yet supported by documentation. As in the past, the
Central Intelligence Agency will not comment on covert opera-
tions alleged to be in progress.
Covert operations do not occur in a void. The Central Intelli-
gence Agency maintains a world-wide clandestine apparatus of
Agency employees posing under a variety of "covers," local
informers, proprietary organizations, and technical facilities. As
technological development has made it possible for almost all
intelligence to be collected without using agents, it is clear that
this clandestine infrastructure has only one purpose: covert
activities.
Most of these covert activities have taken place within the
emerging nations of the Third World. The initial rationale for
targeting these countries arose out of a belief that the Third
World was to be the battleground of the Cold War. In recent
years a new rationale has developed as Third World countries
46
CounterSpy Magazine
have exhibited an increasing tendency to exercise their sover-
eignty over raw materials and overseas investments integral to
the present economy of the United States. The CIA presence
within socialist countries is usually much more oriented toward
intelligence collection and analysis.
Bureaucratically speaking, this clandestine network and the
covert operations it spawns, operates under the Directorate of
Operations — better known as Clandestine Services — section of
the Central Intelligence Agency. Two of the Agency's other
three Directorates, Management and Services, and Science and
Technology, are largely used by Clandestine Services. Manage-
ment of this clandestine infrastructure begins with ten CIA offi-
cers appointed by Colby to coordinate both intelligence gather-
ing and operational functions. (This is one of the widely
trumpeted reforms instituted by Colby.) Moving down the line,
analytical and managerial functions are performed by various
staffs that are divided along geopolitical lines. These divisions
maintain liaison personnel within their particular area. Until the
recent shift in the internal situation in Ethiopia, for example,
CIA's Africa liaison officer was stationed at a secret National
Security Agency /CIA base within that country.
The key figures, at least in an operational sense, within the
CIA infrastructure are known as Chiefs of Station (COS).
Usually located within the U.S. Embassy compound. Chiefs of
Station are charged with maintaining, creating, and exploiting
the infrastructure within a given country. CIA influence within
political parties, civic associations, student groups, labor un-
ions, media, the military, and other governmental agencies can
accurately be described as a web with the Chief of Station at its
center.
The Department of State usually provides the COS and other
CIA personnel with cover stories, hiding them among real For-
eign Service Officers, and providing them with diplomatic im-
munity. In many countries, CIA personnel are found in the U.S.
Embassy's "political" section.
In nations where U.S. presence is extensive, additional mana-
gerial personnel known as Chiefs of Base (COB) may be located
within U.S. consulates and/or military facilities. In India, for
instance, the CIA maintains four known facilities at New Delhi,
Bombay, Calcutta, and Madras. All these facilities are under
diplomatic guise. In Germany, on the other hand, CIA activity is
mixed between military and diplomatic facilities. In many areas
Chiefs of Station
47
where the CIA uses military bases for cover, these bases house
large technical support facilities that cannot be housed in embas-
sies and consulates.
Those CIA personnel living under diplomatic cover are rela-
tively easy to spot. Other intelligence services, host govern-
ments, regular visitors, and even local nationals employed by
the Embassy have little or no trouble spotting CIA personnel.
Dead giveaways for the casually interested person include ex-
otic locks on office doors, a health insurance plan different from
that of State Department employees (with readily available pre-
mium records), and cryptic references in the State Department's
Biographic Register to periods of time assigned to one of the
military services as an "analyst" or "political affairs officer."
The fact that other intelligence services and host governments
are usually aware of the CIA's presence has never really trou-
bled the Agency. The United States and the Soviet Union, for
instance, regularly swap names of intelligence personnel as-
signed to each other's countries for "area familiarization" pur-
poses. And while the CIA isn't about to open overseas branch
offices, a la Chase Manhattan Bank, there are certain advantages
to letting your presence be known. Disgruntled individuals have
little trouble locating the Agency, and Third World security
forces often look to the CIA for technical assistance.
In some countries, particularly when a potentially explosive
political situation may be brewing, a CIA officer may be installed
as Ambassador. Richard Helms, former Director of Central In-
telligence, was assigned to mercurial Iran after the Watergate
crisis forced him to leave his post. And political parties in Vene-
zuela have reacted to the nomination of Harry W. Shlaudeman
as U.S. Ambassador by charging that he is a CIA operative
being sent in to subdue the increasingly nationalist policies of
that country.
U.S. foreign policy, both overt and covert, is administered
through what is known as the "country team" concept. This
"country team," nominally headed by the Ambassador, is com-
posed of the highest ranking Foreign Service Officers within a
given country, including the COS. Its job is to concretize the
often vague platitudes issued by Washington. The CIA's role in
all this, of course, is the implementation of clandestine aspects
of foreign policy, a role that has been unquestioned until lately.
An example of this clandestine policy and implementation can
be seen with tensions that existed between the U.S. and Cuba
48
CounterSpy Magazine
during the early 1960s. The goal of U.S. foreign policy was to
isolate Cuba from the rest of the non-Communist world. In Latin
America, governments were pressured to break diplomatic rela-
tions. Those governments that opposed U.S. policy toward
Cuba soon began experiencing internal strife and economic
chaos, directed, of course, by the CIA. Governments in Ecua-
dor and Argentina, among others, were overthrown as the result
of CIA activities.
The range of covert actions available to the CIA is limitless
where a strong infrastructure exists, and can even include such
"simple" exercises as spray painting right-wing slogans on
walls. Most actions are approved by staff within the Directorate
of Operations, with only the larger and more expensive ones
going to the National Security Council or the Forty Committee
for approval.
Two categories of covert action exist: Psychological Warfare
and Paramilitary. Psychological Warfare actions, as defined by
former CIA agent Philip Agee, include "propaganda (also
known simply as media), work in youth and student organiza-
tions, work in labor organizations (trade unions, etc.), work in
professional and cultural groups, and in political parties." He
goes on to define paramilitary actions as ' 'infiltration into denied
areas, sabotage, economic warfare, personal harassment, air
and maritime support, weaponry, training and support for small
armies."
The Chief of Station is charged with overseeing the use of
these techniques and the network of contacts that makes them
possible. The world-wide infrastructure maintained by the CIA
intervenes in the affairs of other nations on a daily basis, not
"from time to time as the National Security Council may
direct."
Despite the national debate currently in progress, the Ameri-
can public is still being asked to leave evaluation of this nation's
security forces to dubiously qualified experts. The record of
such experts in overseeing the activities of the Central Intelli-
gence Agency is clear: power continues to be abused, nations
and peoples are being denied the right of self-determination, and
the clandestine infrastructure that makes covert action possible
continues to remain unchecked.
Since foreign intelligence services, host countries, and other
interested parties have an awareness of the CIA's world-wide
clandestine presence, the American people have a right to know
Chiefs of Station
49
as much as those outside the United States do. The time has
come for the cloak of secrecy surrounding the activities of the
CIA to be examined and cut down to size, a size that reflects the
people's right to know.
In keeping with the belief of the Fifth Estate that the people
have a right to know about the nature of their security forces,
and Philip Agee's statement following is a list of the CIA's
Chiefs of Station and Chiefs of Base from around the world. The
list is accurate as of June 1974, and contains as many personnel
working under diplomatic cover as we were able to locate. Due
to transfers and other causes, there may be a few inaccuracies.
For purposes of this list, CAS means "Controlled American
Source," a name used to route information to intelligence of-
fices. COS means "Chief of Station" and COB means "Chief of
Base."
CAS— Kabul
U.S. Embassy
Kabul, Afghanistan
COS — Samuel H. Rickard III
CAS— Algeria
Embassy of Switzerland
U.S. Interests Section
Algiers, Algeria
COS— Edward R.M. Kane
CAS — Vienna
U.S. Embassy
Vienna, Austria
COS— Charles Troflord Malton
Jr.
CAS— Dacca
U.S. Embassy
Dacca, Bangladesh
COS — George T. Walsh
CAS — Brussels
U.S. Embassy
Brussels, Belgium
COS— Michael S. Thompson
CAS— Antwerp
U.S. Consulate General
Antwerp, Belgium
COB— Rowland E. Roberts Jr.
CAS— La Paz
U.S. Embassy
La Paz, Bolivia
COS — Frederick W. La trash
CAS — Brasilia
U.S. Embassy
Brasilia, Brazil
COS— Wilfred D. Koplowifc
CAS— Recife
U.S. Consulate General
Recife, Brazil
COB— Thomas J. Barrett Jr.
CAS— Rio de Janeiro
U.S. Consulate General
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
COB— Stephen F. Creane
50
CounterSpy Magazine
CAS — Rangoon
U.S. Embassy
Rangoon, Burma
COS— Clyde R. McAvoy
CAS — Bujumbura
U.S. Embassy
Bujumbura, Burundi
COS<— John C. Beam
CAS — Phnom Penh
U.S. Embassy
Phnom Penh, Cambodia
COS—John F. McCarthy ID
CAS — Yaounde
U.S. Embassy
Yaounde, Cameroon
COS— Jeff Cory don III
CAS— Ottawa
U.S. Embassy
Ottawa, Canada
COS— Cleveland C. Cram
CAS — Bangui
U.S. Embassy
Bangui, Centra] African Empire
COS— William L. Mosebey Jr.
CAS— Santiago
U.S. Embassy
Santiago, Chile
COS — Stewart D. Burton
CAS — Bogota
U.S. Embassy
Bogota, Colombia
COS— Nestor D. Sanchez
CAS — Sao Jose
U.S. Embassy
San Jose, Costa Rica
COS— Comer W. Gilstrap Jr.
CAS— Pi'jgue
U.S. Embassy
Prague, Czechoslovakia
COS— Richard A. Kahane
CAS— Santo Domingo
U.S. Embassy
Santo Domingo, Dominican
Republic
COS— Thomas A. Clayton
CAS— Quito
U.S. Embassy
Quito, Ecuador
COS— Paul V. Harwood
CAS— Guayaquil
U.S. Consulate General
Guayaquil, Ecuador
COB— Norman M. Decoteaux
CAS— Cairo
U.S. Embassy
Cairo, Egypt
COS— Arthur M. Niner Jr.
CAS— San Salvador
U.S. Embassy
San Salvador, El Salvador
COS — Kenneth R. Goodman
CAS— Addis Ababa
U.S. Embassy
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
COS— Eugene L. Jeffers Jr.
CAS — Helsinki
U.S. Embassy
Helsinki, Finland
COS — William C. Simenson
CAS— Paris
U.S. Embassy
Paris, France
COS— Eugen F. Burgstaller
Chiefs of Station
SI
PIC n„ii„
tAa — Berlin
CAS— Bombay
U.S. Mission
U.S. Consulate General
West Berlin
Bombay, India
COS— George Weisz
COB— Edward J. Gotchef
CAS— Accra
CAS— Calcutta
U.S. Embassy
U.S. Consulate General
Accra, Ghana
Calcutta, India
COS-Joel D. Ticknor
COB— E. Norbert Garrett III
CAS— Athens
CAS — Madras
U.S. Embassy
U.S. Consulate General
Athens, Greece
Madras, India
COS — Stacy B. Hulse Jr.
COB— Jack S. Ogjno
CAS— Guatemala City
CAS — Jakarta
U.S. Embassy
U.S. Embassy
Guatemala City, Guatemala
Jakarta, Indonesia
COS — Edwin M. Terrell
COS— Clifton R. Strathern
CAS— Conakry
CAS— Medan
U.S. Embassy
U.S. Consulate
Conakry, Guinea
Medan, Indonesia
COS— Peter V. Raudenbush
COB — Thomas L. Norwood Jr.
CAS— Georgetown
CAS — Surabaya
U.S. Embassy
U.S. Consulate
Georgetown, Guyana
Surabaya, Indonesia
COS — Robert H. Rlefe
COB— Robert H. Mills
CAS — Port-au-Prince
0\a — l ehran
U.S. Embassy
U.S. Embassy
Port-au-Prince, Haiti
Tehran, Iran
COS — James D. Montgomery
COS— George W. Cave
CAS— Tegucigalpa
CAS — Rome
U.S. Embassy
U.S. Embassy
Tegucigalpa, Honduras
Rome, Italy
COS— Glenn O. Brown
COS— Howard E. Stone
CAS— New Delhi
CAS— Abidjan
U.S. Embassy
U.S. Embassy
New Delhi, India
Abidjan, Ivory Coast
COS— William C. Grimsley Jr.
COS— Martin J. Bergin Jr.
52
CounterSpy Magazine
CAS— Kingston
CAS— Rabat
\-J . \J . *—l 1 1IUO.J.JJ
Kingston, Jamaica
Rabat, Morocco
COS— Thomas J. Kcenan
COS— Charles G. Cogan
CAS— Amman
CAS — Casablanca
U.S. Embassy
U.S. Consulate General
Amman, Jordan
Casablanca, Morocco
COS — Frederic H. Sabin III
COB— Mark T.Colby
CAS— Nairobi
CAS — Kathmandu
U.S. Embassy
U.S. Embassy
Nairobi, Kenya
Kathmandu, Nepal
COS — Howard T. Bane
COS— Joseph A. Murray Jr.
CAS— Kuwait
CA&— Manaima
US Fmhassv
, i • . 1 - 1 ~ 1 1 1 1 ' LA JJ t
US Fmhassv
V ' - » > - I'll! 1 ' LA JJ t
Kuwait, Kuwait
Managua, Nicaragua
COS— Robert C. Ames
COS — Joseph Piccolo Jr.
CAS— Beirut
CAS— Kaduna
U.S. Embassy
U.S. Consulate
Beirut, Lebanon
Kaduna, Nigeria
COS— John J. Seidel Jr.
COB — Robert W. Ince
CAS— Luxembourg
CAS— Muscat
II S Fmhassv
11^ FiTihn^v
Luxembourg, Luxembourg
Muscat, Oman
COS — Felt on M. Wyatt
COS— Robert L. Headley Jr.
CAS— Bamako
CAS— Islamabad
U.S. Embassy
II S Fmhassv
Bamako, Mali
Islamabad, Pakistan
COS— Raymond F. Denicourt
COS— Donald F. Vogel
CAS — Valletta
CAS — Karachi
IIS Fmhassv
II S Consulate General
WlJ - w v^uilJUlaiv. VJ&ll&l al
Valletta, Malta
Karachi, Pakistan
COS — George A. Chritton
COB— Edward R. Brown
CAS— Port Louis
CAS— Panama City
U.S. Embassy
U.S. Embassy
Port Louis, Mauritius
Panama City, Panama
COS — Vasia C. Gmirkin
COS — Joseph Y. Kiyonaga
Chiefs of Station
S3
CAS — Lima
U.S. Embassy
Lima, Peru
COS — Richard S. Welch
CAS — Manila
U.S. Embassy
Manila, Philippines
COS— forge T. Kalaris
CAS— Warsaw
U.S. Embassy
Warsaw, Poland
COS— Carl E. Gebhardt
CAS— Bucharest
U.S. Embassy
Bucharest, Romania
COS — Jay K. Gruner
CAS— Jidda
U.S. Embassy
Jidda, Saudi Arabia
COS — Raymond H. Close
CAS— Dakar
U.S. Embassy
Dakar, Senegal
COS— Charles L. Randolph
CAS— Singapore
U.S. Embassy
Singapore, Singapore
COS— David T. Samson
CAS — Mogadiscio
U.S. Embassy
Mogadiscio, Somalia
COS— David P. Hunt
CAS— Pretoria
U.S. Embassy
Pretoria, South Africa
COS — Jarrel H. Richardson
CAS— Colombo
U.S. Embassy
Colombo, Sri Lanka
COS—James A. Higham
CAS— Khartoum
U.S. Embassy
Khartoum, Sudan
COS— Murat Natirboff
CAS — Dar es Salaam
U.S. Embassy
Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
COS — Harry S. Slifer Jr.
CAS— Ankara
U.S. Embassy
Ankara, Turkey
COS— John H. Hoskins
CAS — Istanbul
U.S. Consulate General
Istanbul, Turkey
COB— Robert B. Goodwin
CAS— Abu Dhabi
U.S. Embassy
Abu Dhabi,
United Arab Emirates
COS— James M. Fernaid
CAS— London
U.S. Embassy
London, United Kingdom
COS— Cord Meyer Jr.
CAS— Hong Kong
U.S. Consulate General
Hong Kong, United Kingdom
COS— Joseph J. Simon
CAS— Montevideo
U.S. Embassy
Montevideo, Uruguay
COS— Martin C. Hawkins
54
CounterSpy Magazine
CAS — Caracas
U.S. Embassy
Caracas. Venezuela
COS — Wade E. Thomas
CAS— Saigon
U.S. Embassy
Saigon, Vietnam
COS— Thomas Polgar
CAS— Danang
U.S. Consulate General
Danang, Vietnam
COB— James M. Howley
CAS— Bien Hoa
U.S. Consulate General
Bien Hoa, Vietnam
COB — Thomas W. Lamb
CAS — Belgrade
U.S. Embassy
Belgrade, Yugoslavia
COS— Richard F. StoU Jr.
CAS — Kinshasa
U.S. Embassy
Kinshasa, Zaire
COS— James Kim, Stuart E.
Methven
CAS — New York
U.S. Mission to the United
Nations
New York, New York
COS— Rudulph E. Carter
CAS— Geneva
U.S. Mission to the European
Office of the United Nations
Geneva, Switzerland
COB — Leo Sandel, Throop M.
Wilder Jr.
CAS— Paris
Office of Permanent U.S.
Representative to UNESCO
Paris, France
COB— John H. Kenney
CAS— Zagreb
U.S. Consulate General
Zagreb, Yugoslavia
COB— Paul J. Redmond
[Editors' Note: Further investigation has revealed that a few
of those named by CounterSpy were not, in fact. Chiefs of Sta-
tion. CounterSpy 's mistake — and it is a common one — was to
give as the Station Chief the highest ranking CIA person shown
on the Foreign Service List. The FSLs, however, frequently fail
to show the names of the very top CIA people in certain coun-
tries, especially in Europe.
For example, in the case of Austria, the FSL for June 1974
showed a political officer (FSR-3) named Charles T. Malton, Jr.
Malton's career history in the 1974 Biographic Register clearly
marked him as a long-time CIA officer, and since the FSL
showed no other CIA officer with a higher grade or greater sen-
iority, CounterSpy named him as Chief of Station. Other avail-
able sources, however, showed a higher ranking CIA official
Chiefs of Station
55
above Malt on in the U.S. Embassy in Vienna — a CIA official
whose name was carefully dropped from recent FSLs and Bio-
graphic Registers. This vanishing spook, the real Chief of Sta-
tion in Vienna in 1974, was Hugh Montgomery, who was later
identified holding down the top spot in Rome. (See "Hello Hugh
Montgomery" by Steve Weissman, in this volume.)
The same mistake appeared in the case of South Africa, where
Francis J. Jeton was actually higher ranking than the man
named, Jarrel Richardson; and in the case of the United King-
dom, CounterSpy correctly named station chief Cord Meyer,
Jr., even though his name was also absent from the FSLs. For
the most part, though, the CounterSpy list seemed to be correct,
and where the individuals named were not Chiefs of Station,
they appeared to be high-ranking CIA officials in any event.]
Cord Meyer:
Superspook
by Godfrey Hodgson
A little before eight o'clock each morning, an unobtrusive ritual
is enacted on the corner of South Eaton Place and Chester Row
in Belgravia.
The tall house on the southwest corner has two entrances.
First, out of the main porch in South Eaton Place, a houseboy in
a white jacket emerges and scans both streets. The pavements
are empty. It will be an hour before the au pair girls drag the
little boys in blazers to school, and almost two hours before the
City men puff off to Sloane Square Underground. Satisfied, the
houseboy steps inside, presumably to telephone for the car.
A few minutes later, it slides up, a long black American sedan,
left-hand drive. The driver gets out. He is a burly, stone-bald
man with dark glasses. A Kojak fan. He, too, scans the pave-
ments, theatrically, puts his chauffeur's cap on, and gets back
into the car.
[This article first appeared in the Sunday Times Magazine of
June 15. 1975, in London.]
56
Cord Meyer: Superspook
57
Then, abruptly, a grey man with a grey suit and grey hair
hurries out of another entrance at the other side of the house.
He's tallish, fiftyish, fit: a tennis player. He gets into the passen-
ger seat and the big car slides away.
Punctually and early, like the bureaucrat he is, but also with
the circumspection of his profession, and with just a residual
hint of adolescent pleasure in playing cloak-and-dagger games.
Cord Meyer, Junior, head of the London station of the CIA, is
off to the office.
There have been reports that Meyer is due to be replaced this
summer, and other reports that, no, he's here to stay. [He was
replaced by Edward W. Proctor in late 1976.]
There are, again, those in Washington who maintain that
Meyer was sent to London in 1973 to take charge of the entire
CIA operation in Western Europe. What with the oil crisis, and
Portugal, and Italy, and the British miners' strike, the theory
was that the stirring days of the late 1940s, when the CIA rec-
kons it saved Europe from Communist subversion, were here
again. Washington decided — on this interpretation — that the
London job, with a supervisory function for Western Europe as
a whole, needed a senior man, and the fact that Meyer had
experience of clandestine operations — which he does — was a
bonus.
But then there are other people in Washington who lift their
eyes to the heavens and say: "Listen, what with Watergate, and
a presidential commission and the Congress, not to mention the
Press, investigating the agency, the last thing anyone needs is
any more Chile-style publicity. Meyer has been put out to grass
in London."
But these are after all only theories, because, whatever any-
one may try to tell you, even the world's leakiest secret intelli-
gence agency doesn't discuss its personnel policy in public.
What is not in doubt is that Cord Meyer, Jr. , is no ordinary
head of the CIA's London station.
His family, on both sides, were wealthy, and his father, after
making a supplemental fortune in real estate development to add
to the family sugar interests, became an American diplomat.
Cord and his twin brother grew up in the world of John P.
Marquand's novels and John O'Hara's stories. They went to St.
Paul's, in New Hampshire, one of the two or three best-known
and most expensive American private boarding schools. At
58
Godfrey Hodgson
Yale, Cord graduated summa cum laude, six months early, be-
cause this was December 1942, and he and other young men in
his class were in a hurry to get into uniform. He became a
Marine lieutenant.
In July 1944, during the landing on Guam, a Japanese grenade
rolled into his foxhole. He lost the sight of one eye and for a few
agonizing moments he thought that he was totally blind. Then,
as he described the experience in a short story later, he thought
he could see a single star in the sky.
"Fearing that he might have created it out of the intensity of
his wish," he wrote, "he let the lid close and then forced it open
again. The star lay still in the now soft and friendly dark. It
flooded his being like the summer sun. He saw it as the window
of Hope."
In the seven months he spent in hospital, Meyer made up his
mind to spend his life working to prevent war. "If possible," he
wrote from hospital to his parents, "I should like to make a life's
work of doing what little I can in the problems of international
cooperation."
In a sense, he has made those problems his life's work. But
not quite, perhaps, in the sense he meant then.
He started out as a radical. "I wish," he wrote in the story I
have already quoted, "that all those in power, countrymen and
enemies alike, who decided for war, all those who profit by it,
lay dead with their wealth and their honors."
In 1945 he went to the conference which drew up the United
Nations Charter in San Francisco. He became one of the leaders
of the American Veterans' Committee, a liberal servicemen's
organization expressly intended to challenge the conservative
American Legion. Two years later he became one of the moving
spirits of the United World Federalists. Their goal was world
government. For four years Meyer traveled tens of thousands of
miles, he talked, he lectured, and he wrote a highly persuasive
book, Peace or Anarchy, all drumming home the message that
world government was the only alternative to nuclear catastro-
phe. He was so persuasive that in 1947 he was chosen as one of
the 10 outstanding young men in America. (One of the others
was a young congressman from California called Richard M.
Nixon.)
Then, in 1951, at the personal invitation of the director, Allen
Dulles, he joined the CIA.
His career has been made, not in intelligence, in the strict
Cord Meyer: Superspook
59
sense of the word, but in the departments which come under the
authority of the Deputy Director for Plans, which is a euphe-
mism for clandestine operations, and is not unjustly known in
Washington as the "department of dirty tricks. 1 '
He began by working for Tom Braden, who later resigned and
became a fashionable liberal columnist. Braden has admitted
that he was responsible for pouring CIA money into the trade
union movement, both in America and in Europe. Later, Meyer
worked for the legendary Thomas Karamessines: it was widely
believed that he would succeed "the Greek" as Deputy Director
for Plans — "Washington's closest equivalent," according to the
late Stewart Alsop, a considerable authority on these matters,
"to James Bond s boss, 'M.'!"
Meyer, in other words, worked for that part of the agency
which organized the penetration of trade unions in Europe and
Latin America; which mounted the Bay of Pigs fiasco; and
which certainly helped to overthrow governments secretly in
Iran, Guatemala, Guyana, Brazil, Greece, and Chile.
In 1972 the Washington Post's Lawrence Stern revealed that
the CIA's intervention on behalf of the Christian Democrat,
Eduardo Frei, cost $20 million and dwarfed even the later effort
against the Allende government. "One of the key figures in the
1964 intervention," Stern reported, "was Cord Meyer, Jr. He
directed the CIA's covert programs to neutralize Communist
influence on important opinion-making sectors such as trade un-
ions, farmer and peasant organizations, student activities and
the media." That was what "international cooperation" had
come to mean for Meyer.
Late in 1966, a disgruntled member of the staff of the National
Student Association — roughly the equivalent of the NUS — blew
the whistle. The CIA, he said, had been secretly subsidizing the
foreign activities of the NSA for years.
Then it gradually emerged that the subsidies to the NSA were
only a fraction of the CIA's secret support for voluntary organi-
zations. Through an ingenious structure of front organizations,
conduits, "pass throughs," and other devices, the CIA was
pouring millions of dollars a year into trade unions, cultural
activities, and educational institutions all over the world — in-
cluding some activities in the United States, where it was specif-
ically forbidden to operate by the National Security Act of 1947,
its charter. (In recent weeks it has emerged that the Agency has
also been using business firms, including the publishers of the
60
Godfrey Hodgson
Fodor guide books, and the J. Walter Thompson advertising
agency, as cover.)
"The 'spook' in charge of covertly subsidizing the overseas
activities of the National Student Association and other youth
groups, labor and professional organizations," the New York
Times reported on May 30, 1967, was Cord Meyer, Jr.
Perhaps in the long run the most influential investment the
CIA made was in trade unions. Without it, for example, the
successful right-wing coup d'etat in Brazil in 1964 would prob-
ably have been impossible. But many intellectuals, both in the
U.S. and in Europe, were more shocked to learn that the Con-
gress for Cultural Freedom had been secretly on the American
government's payroll for years. The Congress held high-pow-
ered conferences to which European intellectuals were glad
enough to be invited in the 1950s. It also published serious
monthlies like Encounter in London, which provided a forum
for long political and literary articles by British and European
intellectuals who had few comparable outlets elsewhere, and
also for the exposition of the "end of ideology" dogma — which
meant the end of all ideologies except that of American liberal-
ism. No other single incident, perhaps, has done more to dis-
credit the CIA with American intellectuals than the NSA affair.
President Johnson was constrained to issue an order ending all
secret CIA financing of voluntary organizations.
On the face of it, you might think that to be "blown" in this
way ought to have proved fatal to Meyer's career. That supposi-
tion rests on a misunderstanding, however. The CIA is not a
rogue agency. What it does is done in obedience to presidential
orders. As the official inquiry into the NSA and consequent
revelations noted, "such assistance was given pursuant to Na-
tional Security Council policies beginning in October 1951."
Five years later, he was briefly in the public eye again. In the
summer of 1972, he turned up in the office of his old friend and
former fellow World Federalist, the Kennedy entourage's favor-
ite publisher, Cass Canfield of Harper and Row, to ask if the
agency could see galley proofs of a book which alleged that it
had been involved in the heroin trade in South-East Asia. The
book was by a Yale graduate student called Alfred McCoy.
Fashions in idealism had changed at Yale in 30 years.
Harper did submit the galleys. The CIA responded with sug-
gested corrections which a Harper editor described as
Cord Meyer: Super spook
61
"laughably pathetic." The book was published uncorrected.
The only effect of Cord Meyer's attempt to apply his imprimatur
was a little welcome prepublication publicity.
I met Cord Meyer socially several times in Washington in the
early 1960s. I remember two occasions in particular with painful
clarity. The second was at a party given by the book review
department of the Washington Post. Meyer there picked a vio-
lent quarrel with the Post's foreign editor on the grounds that he
had printed some news which Meyer felt ought not to have been
printed.
The first occasion was the very first dinner party I was invited
to in Georgetown, the elegant eighteenth-century and mock
eighteenth-century district where Meyer and many other senior
officials with private means live. Georgetown was always fash-
ionable. The Kennedys made it known as fashionable to every
magazine reader in the country, and the Meyers were very much
a part of the Camelot scene. Cord Meyer's first wife was a friend
of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, and her sister was then married
to Kennedy's friend Ben Bradlee, now editor of the Washington
Post.
Meyer spent about an hour bullying an elderly Canadian diplo-
mat about why Canadians should be so perverse as to wish to
remain independent of the United States. It was a subject on
which no Canadian diplomat could possibly have engaged in
argument with an American official. The diplomat, who had a
serious heart ailment, was visibly distressed, but Meyer
ploughed on, without wit, taste, or mercy. On both occasions his
fervor and unreasonableness were disturbing.
It has been a sad trajectory, from the young idealist to the
angry intellectual gendarme in the department of dirty tricks.
Personal tragedies, as well as public experiences, shaped the
man. (Meyer's twin brother was killed on Okinawa in 1945. His
nine-year-old son was killed by a car in 1959, and his first mar-
riage ended in divorce shortly afterward. Five years later, his
former wife was murdered while going for a walk along the
towpath in Washington.) But the transformation of Cord Meyer
is a story of broader relevance than any banal American tragedy
or private grief, frustrated ambition or embittered idealism. It is
the tragedy of an entire generation of the American ruling class.
Cord Meyer, Yale '43, the man with a golden future behind him,
62
Godfrey Hodgson
epitomizes a class and a generation who seemed to have the
whole world as the raw material for their ambitions and their
ideals. They have ended up, as he has, powerful, comfortable,
angry, frustrated, and above all puzzled that their superiority is
so little appreciated.
For Cord Meyer and for his generation, the crucial experience
was that of McCarthyism. He was not a witch-hunter, as those
with an oversimplified view of the CIA might suppose. He was a
victim. Or rather he had a narrow escape. At a certain price . . .
Many people, no doubt, think of the CIA as being automati-
cally on the side of reaction. It has, indeed, all too often taken
the side of reaction all over the world. But, in American political
terms, the CIA has always had a split ideological personality.
It has, of course, found room for many "conservatives": an
industrialist like John McCone as Director, a military man like
General Vernon Walters as Deputy Director, and assorted anti-
Communist bigots right down the bureaucratic ladder to the for-
mer FBI men, the Ukrainian emigres, and the Cuban refugees
who do the dirty work.
Yet the CIA's position within the U.S. government has by no
means usually been the hard right-wing position. On Vietnam,
the Pentagon Papers show how often it took a more "liberal"
position than other agencies. In terms of personality, the domi-
nant group in the CIA has been made up of men who, at least
until the crisis of the Vietnam war, called themselves liberals:
men like Richard Helms, Richard Bissell, Frank Wisner, James
Angleton, William Putnam Bundy, William Colby. . . and Cord
Meyer.
One should not make the mistake of supposing that they were
ever very far to the left. Some of the clever young men from Ivy
League universities who were recruited into the agency in its
early years really did have strongly progressive views. Rev. Wil-
liam Sloane Coffin, who ended up on trial alongside Dr. Benja-
min Spock, was one of them, and perhaps for a while Cord
Meyer was another.
But when people spoke of Bissell or Wisner or Bundy as
"liberals," they didn't really mean that they had left-wing
views. They meant two other things which were associated with
that elastic adjective, "liberal." They meant that they were
"internationalists," in the sense of advocating American inter-
vention around the world. And they meant that they were what
used to be called "gentlemen": educated men from the upper
middle class.
Cord Meyer: Superspook
63
For both reasons, they were natural targets for McCarthy.
While on the surface McCarthy, Nixon, and the other witch-
hunters of the early 1950s were in pursuit of the agents of for-
eign communism, in fact they were after their own domestic
enemies. One aspect of McCarthyism was that it was the re-
venge of the isolationist Middle West, and of the isolationist
ethnic groups, Irish- and German- Americans, on that "interna-
tionalist,' 1 pro-British elite which had demanded intervention.
Secondly, it was a movement fired with populist resentment
against the elite, the Establishment. That was why McCarthy
went after Acheson with such venom. The charge that Acheson,
the architect of the Truman Doctrine, was soft on communism,
was never convincing. The charge that he was the kind of man
who bought his suits in Savile Row was persuasive, and McCar-
thy knew it.
In conjunction with his assault on the State Department,
therefore, it was inevitable that McCarthy should have fired a
few salvos at the new agency which was no less committed to
"internationalism," and if anything even fuller of just the breed
of rich, clever, idealistic, and superior young men that McCar-
thy and his yahoos could least abide. Meyer was an obvious
target, on all four grounds.
The charges did not need to be specific. The FBI obligingly
reported that Meyer was "an admitted World Federalist" and
that he had "knowingly associated with Communists." Given
the fact that he had spent two years fighting the Communists
round a table on the American Veterans' Committee, and then
rather more than two years traveling round the country pro-
claiming his allegiance to World Federalism, the charges might
have been comic, if they hadn't been so dangerous.
Many men in his position gave up and resigned. Meyer fought.
He was allowed three months' leave to prepare his defense, and
with his lawyer he produced several hundred pages of rebuttal.
In November 1953, Allen Dulles called him in to tell him he was
cleared. He had satisfied the inquisitors of his ideological ortho-
doxy. He was free to become an inquisitor himself.
Friends say that he was irremediably scarred by the experi-
ence. He himself has said that during those months he read
Kafka's Trial, and with a new understanding. Meyer had always
been anti-Communist. Now he seems to have decided that never
again would he leave room for the slightest doubt about the
totality of his commitment to the hardest of hard anti-Commu-
nist lines.
64
Godfrey Hodgson
Traumatic and decisive as the McCarthy episode was, it was
after all only a special case of a general proposition. American
society is not appreciative of elites. In the America in which
Cord Meyer's generation grew up, life was genuinely hard for
most Americans. While he was at St. Paul's and Yale, something
approaching a quarter of the working population was out of a
job. The farmer, the unemployed worker, the immigrant's son,
had to learn to be tough in that America. Those who grew up in
sheltered homes and private schools seem to have acquired a
special compulsion to prove how tough they were, too. And this
syndrome in individual psychology — it is, after all, the Heming-
way syndrome — had its political equivalent. The "liberals" —
the foreign policy elite to which Cord Meyer and his friends in
Georgetown and the CIA belonged — had to prove that they were
as red-blooded in their Americanism as anyone else. As much as
anything else, this auction in political masculinity was the cause
of the war which they have just lost. Yet there was also a fatal
survival of the old New England moralism. Meyer's generation
and class never, in Cromwell's phrase, bethought themselves in
the bowels of Christ that they might be mistaken.
The story remains a tragedy. As Daniel Patrick Moynihan has
said of the elite to which Meyer belongs: "Life is tragic for those
who are impelled by conscience to pursue objectives which can
be attained only through means which conscience finds
abhorrent."
The CIA in
Portugal
by Philip Agee
The revolutionary process in Portugal is being attacked by the
guardians of capitalist countries' interests, of which the U.S.
Central Intelligence Agency is the most notorious and powerful.
I see the signs daily. These counterrevolutionary activities are
similar to what I did in the CIA for more than ten years during
the 1950s and 60s. I send this letter as part of a continuing effort
by many Americans to end imperialist intervention and support
to repression by the U.S. government.
In the Azores as well as in mainland Portugal, in the Catholic
Church, in political parties, and even within the armed forces,
the CIA and its allies are working to create enough chaos to
justify an attempt by the so-called moderates to take over the
Revolutionary Government.
Since the fall of fascism in Portugal, I have tried to follow
developments and have twice visited your country. While my
[This article was written in London in August 1975. and was
then circulated as "A Letter to the Portuguese People. ' ' )
65
66
Philip Agee
study of the visible signs of CIA intervention is still incomplete,
there is good reason to alert you to what I have seen. Last week
a U.S. Senator announced that the Communist Party of Portugal
is receiving $10 million per month from the Soviet Union, a
figure he attributed to the CIA. Two days later Deputy CIA
Director General Vernon Walters (who visited Lisbon to survey
the political situation in August of 1974) confirmed the Senator's
claim. Secretary of State Kissinger, for his part, publicly warned
the Soviet Union recently that assistance by them to the Por-
tuguese revolutionary process was endangering detente. These
statements suggest that the American people are being prepared
for another secret foreign adventure by the CIA.
I will describe below what I believe are CIA operations, along
with a list of the names and residences in Portugal of as many of
the CIA functionaries as I can identify.
The size of the overall U.S. government mission in Portugal is
shocking, especially its heavy dominance by military personnel.
The mission totals 280 persons, of whom about 160 are Ameri-
cans, with the rest being Portuguese employees. Of the Ameri-
cans, 105 are military personnel assigned mainly to the Military
Assistance Advisory Group, the office of the Defense Attache
and the COMIBERLANT command of NATO.
Of the approximately SO American civilians in the mission
about 10, I believe, are employees of the CIA. No less than 10
additional CIA functionaries are probably working in Lisbon
and other cities, having been assigned ostensibly for temporary
duties so that their presence is not included on Embassy person-
nel lists, nor reported to the Portuguese Foreign Ministry.
One must also assume that additional CIA operations officers
have been placed under cover in American military units in Por-
tugal, where their experience in political operations — far supe-
rior to that of their military colleagues — will be most effective.
While efforts to divert the revolution through General Spinola
have failed, new efforts are being made daily in the struggles to
stop the revolution.
Without doubt, the CIA officers in other U.S. embassies, most
likely in Madrid, Paris, and London, have personnel assigned to
Portuguese operations that are undertaken in these countries
rather than in Portugal proper. The most sensitive operations of
the CIA probably are occurring in other European cities rather
than in Lisbon.
Who specifically are responsible for operations against Portu-
The CI A in Portugal
67
gal? The CIA is only one of the various U.S. agencies working
against the revolution, under the guidance of Ambassador Car-
lucci. Although Carlucci is not a CIA man, he must carefully
direct and coordinate all U.S. counterrevolutionary operations,
including those of the military services. His top-level team in-
cludes: Herbert Okun, his Minister Counselor and Deputy Chief
of Mission; John Morgan, the Chief of the CIA; Admiral Frank
Corley, Chief of the Military Assistance Advisory Group; Colo-
nel Peter Blackley, Chief of the Defense Attache Office; Charles
Thomas, Counselor for Political Affairs; and Navy Captain
James Lacey, senior U.S. military representative of the COMI-
BERLANT NATO Command. Each of the U.S. military units,
along with the CIA and State Department personnel, are respon-
sible for one or more of the specific counterrevolutionary
programs.
In order to preserve imperialist interests in Portugal, the revo-
lution must be diverted from its current directions, and the U.S.
government is not alone in its efforts. I strongly suspect that
Kissinger many months ago urged the leaders of Western Euro-
pean governments to intervene themselves directly to reverse
the Portuguese revolutionary process, arguing that the problem
is essentially European and that the CIA has been limited in its
capabilities by recent revelations.
In 1948, when the Communist Party of Italy was about to win
the elections, the U.S. government alone threatened to halt aid
for reconstruction, and even to launch a military invasion. In
recent days, the EEC presidents themselves have threatened to
withhold financial assistance from Portugal unless their style of
democracy is established. Other similarities between post-fas-
cist Portugal and post-World War II Europe are striking. In
Greece, France, and Italy, the U.S. government established
governments submissive to American economic interests while
simultaneously providing alternatives to left-wing governments
led by the same political forces that provided the backbone of
the Resistance in World War II.
The chosen solution in that era was predominantly Christian
Democracy or Social Democracy and the trade union move-
ments corresponding to each. The promotion of these same
forces in Portugal since April 1974 suggests to me that the CIA,
probably in coordination with other Western European intelli-
gence services, is attempting the same solutions that were suc-
cessful in other countries following World War II.
68
Philip Agee
What specifically is the CIA doing in Portugal? The first prior-
ity is to penetrate the Armed Forces Movement in order to col-
lect information on its plans, its weaknesses, and its internal
struggles; to identify the so-called moderates and others who
would be favorable to western strategic interests. The CIA
would use information collected from within the MFA for prop-
aganda inside and outside Portugal designed to divide and
weaken the MFA.
Other CIA tasks include: false documents and rumor cam-
paigns, fomenting of strife, encouraging conflict and jealousy.
Moderates are being assisted where possible in their efforts to
restrain the pace of revolutionary development toward social-
ism. The final goal is for the so-called moderates to take control
of the MFA and all Portuguese military institutions.
U.S. military schools have trained over 3,000 Portuguese mili-
tary personnel since 1950. Detailed files have been accumulated
on every one of them — their personalities, politics, likes and
dislikes, strengths, weaknesses, and vulnerabilities. Many of
these will have already been selected as contacts to be devel-
oped within the Portuguese military establishment, with empha-
sis on developing close relations with as many MFA members as
possible.
Significant efforts have already been made — and these, too,
have failed — to date — to strengthen Social Democratic and
Christian Democratic political parties. The CIA's normal proce-
dure is to maintain friendly relations (and often to give financial
support) with leaders of "moderate 11 opposition political parties
who are forced to live in exile. The purpose is to reap large
benefits when such politicians return home. Often paid agents
are infiltrated into these exile groups in order to obtain additional
information.
The CIA may have intervened in the recent electoral cam-
paign to ensure that the results would "prove 11 that the majority
of Portuguese favor a more "moderate 11 pace for the revolution.
James Lawler, the CIA Deputy Chief of Station in Lisbon, en-
gaged in just such operations in Brazil (in 1962) and in Chile (in
1964) where many millions of dollars were spent by the CIA to
promote the election of the U.S. -approved "moderates. 11
In trade unions, the CIA has also been unsuccessful so far,
but obvious efforts continue. As in Italy and in France after
World War II, the CIA is probably trying to split the trade union
movement by helping to establish an affiliate of the International
The CIA in Portugal
69
Confederation of Free Trade Unions, and by promoting ties
between Portuguese industrial unions and the International
Trade Secretariats. Michael Boggs and Irving Brown, both offi-
cials of the AFL-CIO with notorious ties to the CIA, visited
Portugal last year. Although the capitalist-controlled trade union
institutions failed to establish footholds when the trade union
law was approved in January, the ICFTU is still trying, through
its representative in Portugal, Manuel Simon.
The CIA is also using the Roman Catholic Church for its ends.
Recently a reliable source in Washington told me that large
amounts of money are going from the United States to the Cath-
olic Church for combating the revolution in Portugal. The
Church's opposition to the workers' control of Radio Renas-
cenca should alert us to the identity of interests between the
Portuguese hierarchy and American economic concerns.
Propaganda campaigns are central for all important CIA politi-
cal operations. These campaigns prepare public opinion by cre-
ating fear, uncertainty, resentment, hostility, division, and
weakness. Newspapers, radio, television, wall painting, poster-
ing, fly sheets, and falsified documents of all kinds — the CIA
uses many different techniques. In Portugal, these have had little
success so far, mainly because workers have taken control of
the public information media. But the CIA must continue to aid
— in every possible way — the efforts of "moderate" political
forces to establish and maintain media outlets that the CIA can
use for placing its materials.
Outside Portugal the campaign to discredit the revolution is
having success. In Europe and America we see the themes
clearly: "The MFA has failed to follow the will of most Por-
tuguese as reflected in the April elections. . . . The Portuguese
people have sadly 'lost' their freedom with the diminishing in
importance of the elected assembly. . . . The press has 'lost' its
freedom. . . . Portugal needs 'stability' to solve its social and
economic problems. . . . The revolutionary leadership is inept
and unable to stop the economic downturn." These propaganda
themes are preparing the U.S. and western public opinion for
acceptance of intervention and a strong right-wing military gov-
ernment if the "moderate" solutions fail. These themes present
the usual false dilemma: Portugal will have either capitalist de-
mocracy or cruel heartless Communist dictatorship with attend-
ant dull, austere living conditions. There has, of course, been
little comparison of Portugal today with the cruelty and hard-
70
Philip Agee
ships of capitalist economics under the former fascist political
system.
As in the campaign against Chile, economic warfare is the key
for cutting away public support from the revolutionary leader-
ship. By withholding credits and other assistance from bilateral
and multilateral lending institutions, great hardships will befall
the middle and working classes. Private investment credits can
be frozen, trading contracts delayed and cancelled, and unem-
ployment increased, while imperialist propaganda will place the
blame on workers' demands and the government's weakness
rather than on lending institutions and their deliberate policies of
credit retention. The effects of these programs in Chile during
the Allende administration are known to all.
Propaganda exploitation of economic hardship will thus pre-
pare at least a limited public acceptance of a strong military
government that suddenly appears to "restore national dignity,
discipline, and purpose." If there is a Portuguese Pinochet, he
ought to be identified now.
In coming months we will probably see intensification of the
CIA's operations to create fear, uncertainty, economic disrup-
tion, political division, and the appearances of chaos. Political
assassinations must be expected, along with bombings that can
be "attributed" to the revolutionary left. Mr. Morgan, the head
of the CIA in Lisbon, learned these kinds of operations when he
served in Venezuela (1966-1968) and in Brazil (1970-1973). The
"death squads" that were established in those countries during
the last decade must be anticipated and stopped before they
flourish in Portugal.
Greater militancy by reactionary elements in the Catholic
Church must also be expected in their effort to undermine the
revolution. As "moderate" electoral solutions become more and
more remote, the CIA and its "sister" services will increasingly
promote Chile-style "stability" as the only remaining way to
"save" Portugal.
The separatist movement in the Azores, already gaining mo-
mentum among U.S. residents of Azores origin, may be pro-
moted by the CIA as a last resort for preserving U.S. military
bases there. In Angola, the CIA is not standing idly by, where
exceptional resources must be kept in capitalist hands. The
FNLA is likely being supported by the CIA through Zaire in
order to divide the country and prevent MPLA hegemony.
What can be done to defeat this intervention? Clearly the
The CIA in Portugal
71
revolutionary process itself and the people's support and partici-
pation through organs of popular power is the strongest defense.
Nevertheless, imperialist agents ought to be identified and ex-
posed using many of the CIA's own methods against them.
Careful control must be maintained of all entries and exits of
Portugal by U.S. citizens, both through immigration control and
through the issuance of visas for diplomatic and official pass-
ports by Portuguese embassies and consulates.
In the CIA, I worked to install in Uruguay a system whereby
all visitors' visas from socialist countries would require approval
of the Uruguayan Director of Immigration, with whom I worked
closely, giving recommendations on each visa request. Back-
ground investigations of the employment histories of U.S. gov-
ernment officials usually reveal which ones are CIA officers pos-
ing as diplomats. Moreover, all "private" U.S. citizens must be
monitored for possible CIA connections: businessmen, tourists,
professors, students, and retired people. Once these people
have been exposed, the Portuguese people themselves must be
prepared to take the action needed to force the CIA people out
of Portugal. The slogan "CIA OUT" must become a reality.
The shocking U.S. military presence in Portugal could well be
ended altogether. The only "advice" and "assistance" that a
U.S. military group can now give in Portugal is how to make a
counterrevolution.
I list here below the CIA people known to me, and those
whom I believe to be CIA personnel. Some might have left
Portugal recently, but I believe that most of them are still there:
John S. Morgan, (Chief of Station), Av. Suica 3,
Estoril
James N. Lawler, (Deputy Chief of Station), Av. de
Brasil 28, Cascais
Philip W. Snetl, Rua da Beira 6, Carcavelos
Leslie F. Hughes, Praceta da Rua A 3 Lote 3N, Quinta
da Lagoa, Carcavelos
Frank Lowell, Praca das Aguas Livres 80, esq. Lisboa
2
Gerald D. Zapoli, Address unknown
Donna J. Caldwell, Praca das Aguas Livres 60D, esq.
Changes in the CIA
in Portugal
by Philip Agee
Since public exposure in August 1975 of CIA personnel assigned
under diplomatic cover of the U.S. Embassy in Lisbon, a num-
ber of changes have been made including the assignment of a
new Chief of Station, one new operations officer, and two new
communications officers.
The new CIA Chief is David D. Whipple, 53, a veteran of over
25 years' service in the CIA. After military duty in World War
II, Whipple attended the University of Southampton in England
and Dartmouth College and the School of Advanced Interna-
tional Studies in the U.S. His first CIA assignment was under
State Department cover to Saigon and Hanoifrom 1950 to 1953.
During 1953-1956 Whipple served in Rangoon, again under dip-
lomatic cover, and from 1958 to 1961 in Bangkok where he was a
CIA police advisor under cover of the International Cooperation
[This article was written in London in July 1976, and was
then circulated as "Changes in CIA Personnel between Au-
gust 1975 and July 1976. "]
72
Changes in the CIA in Portugal
73
Administration, predecessor of the Agency for International
Development.
Whipple was transferred to the U.S. Consulate in Elizabeth-
ville, Congo (now Lubumbashi, Zaire) arriving in February 1961
just days after the CIA's efforts to assassinate Patrice Lumumba
finally produced the Congolese leader's death. Judging from
Whipple's State Department cover rank, he probably became
the Chief of the CIA's office in the Elizabethville Consulate. He
would have replaced the unidentified CIA officer mentioned in
the Senate assassinations report as having sent a secret cable to
Washington in mid-January 1961 rejoicing over Lumumba's de-
livery to certain death in Elizabethville.
After two years in the Congo, Whipple went on to assign-
ments in London (1967-1970) and Helsinki (1971-1974) before
replacing John Morgan as Lisbon Station Chief sometime during
late 1975. Whipple's diplomatic cover title is Embassy Attache
and his home address is Avenida Portugal 7, Estoril, telephone
number 26-11-68.
The CIA's new operations officer is Joseph J. Marques, 35,
who also appears to have arrived in late 1975. Marques is using
the cover title of Third Secretary in the U.S. Embassy and he
has had previous assignments in Rio de Janeiro (1972-1974) and
Brasilia (1974-1975). The recently arrived communications offi-
cers are Donald Riebhoff and Tony Van Twisk, both of whom
arrived in mid- 1975.
CIA personnel who have remained in Lisbon despite exposure
in 1975 include the Deputy Chief of Station, James Lawler, who,
like Whipple, uses Embassy Attache cover. Lawler lives at Av-
enida de Brasil 28, Cascais, telephone 286-5300, and he has
served previously in Brazil, Chile, and Venezuela. Another
communications officer who appears to have remained in Lisbon
is Leslie Hughes who lives at Praceta da Rua A, Lote 3N, Quinta
da Lagoa, Carcavelos, telephone 247-0833.
Whether or not public exposure was responsible for the per-
sonnel changes cannot be determined, although Morgan only
served for about two years in Lisbon — a short tenure for a CIA
Station Chief. Similarly Philip Snell, who apparently was re-
placed by Marques, served only about a year in Lisbon. Cer-
tainly from the way developments in Portugal since August 1975
have served to favor American government interests, the trans-
fers would not likely have resulted because these officers failed
in their duties.
74
Philip Agee
As Portugal enters, in July 1976, a new phase of its post-
fascist era by installation of its first elected government, the
question of how much foreign influence has been involved, par-
ticularly CIA influence, can still neither be avoided nor defini-
tively answered. However, there can now be little doubt that
intervention by Western European governments, by Social
Democratic and Christian Democratic political parties, and by
conservative political forces has been considerable and encour-
aged by the American government.
U.S. policy on Portugal after the April 1974 coup against fas-
cism was clarified in an interview with Secretary of State Kissin-
ger published in Time on October 27, 1975. Kissinger seemed not
to have varied far from his normal activist-interventionist
stance: "My position has been that without a systematic effort
to encourage the pluralistic forces in Portugal, they would be
defeated." After mentioning disagreement between him and
Western European political leaders, who apparently believed
pluralistic forms could develop under the earlier, leftist Gon-
calves regime, Kissinger added that "during the summer [of
1975] the West Europeans came to the same conclusions we had
earlier reached: namely, that pluralism had to be actively
encouraged."
The Europeans' systematic and active encouragement of plu-
ralism in Portugal was in part to condition collective economic
aid from EEC countries on establishment of a government that
would include participation by Mario Soares' Socialist Party and
the "moderates" within the Armed Forces Movement known as
the Group of Nine and headed by Melo Antunes. Undoubtedly
Kissinger was referring to the meeting in July 1975 of the chiefs
of government of the nine EEC countries in Brussels where they
announced that the $840 million economic aid program then un-
der consideration for Portugal would depend on the achievement
of "pluralistic democracy" in that country.
For the West Europeans, as for Kissinger, pluralism meant a
government freed from control by the radical elements of the
AFM and by the Communist Party of Portugal. That government
was soon established in September 1975 following the violence,
crises, and instability of the previous months — not unlikely
promoted by the CIA and other Western intelligence services.
Meanwhile West European political parties like the Social
Democrats were also active. On August 2, just as the Portuguese
crisis was building to a climax, the Social Democratic leaders
Changes in the CIA in Portugal
75
established in Stockholm a Committee for Friendship and Soli-
darity with Democracy and Socialism in Portugal.
Participating in the meeting, which followed the Helsinki
Summit Conference, were Harold Wilson, British Prime Minis-
ter; Helmut Schmidt, West German Chancellor; Willy Brandt,
Chairman of the German Social Democratic Party; Olof Palme,
Swedish Prime Minister; Bruno Kreisky, Austrian Chancellor;
Francois Mitterand, leader of the French Socialist Party; and, of
course, Mario Soares. At a followup meeting in London during
early September, just as the acceptable pluralistic government
was taking power in Portugal, the European Social Democrats
pledged financial and moral support for the Portuguese Socialist
Party. By this time, according to a report by the New York
Times' Robert Semple, the Brandt party had already quietly
given the Soares party several million dollars worth of office
supplies, newsprint, typewriters, and cash.
Although European Social Democrats presumably would have
funds of their own for intervention in Portugal, they also appear
to have served as conduits for getting CIA money into that coun-
try. Indeed, one possibility is that Kissinger's encouragement of
intervention by the Europeans was meant to pave the way for
more substantial CIA intervention — using the Europeans as
cover.
According to a report by the New York Times' Leslie Gelb
published on September 25, 1975, the CIA had transferred to the
Portuguese Socialist Party and other Portuguese political organi-
zations several million dollars in each of the last several months.
The report, attributed to four official sources in Washington,
added that Western European trade unions were also being used
as conduits for CIA money for Portugal. These unions might
well be some of those that belong to the International Confeder-
ation of Free Trade Unions headquartered in Brussels — gener-
ally regarded as the European trade union structure of the Social
Democratic parties — and probably some of the European-based
International Trade Secretariats.
By October 7, 1975, the foreign ministers of the EEC coun-
tries meeting in Luxembourg agreed to a first-aid package for
Portugal equivalent to $180 million at low interest over the next
two years. By late October the Ford Administration had re-
quested Congressional approval of $85 million for Portugal, and
other financial assistance has included a $100 million loan from
the European Free Trade Association, with Sweden and Switz-
76
Philip Agee
erland making the biggest contributions. More aid will likely
follow installation of the new government.
Even after the right wing of the Portuguese military services
were able to seize the pretext of a supposed "Communist plot 11
in late November 1975 and to disarm and dismantle the radical
military units, the European Social Democratic parties contin-
ued their support for the Portuguese Socialist Party. Meeting in
Oporto on March 13-14, 1976, right in the middle of the electoral
campaign for the new Portuguese parliament, Brandt, Palme,
Kreisky, and the others reiterated their solidarity with the Por-
tuguese Socialist Party and without doubt contributed to the
victory of the Soares party in the elections on April 25. Also
participating in the March conference was Otto Kersten, long-
time leader of the International Confederation of Free Trade
Unions.
With the Portuguese Socialist Party now embarking on minor-
ity parliamentary government in the midst of grave economic
crisis and the difficulties of absorbing the half-million immi-
grants and returnees from Angola, and even with the strong,
Gaullist-style presidency safely occupied by the military leader
of the rightist victory in November, stability in Portugal of the
type favorable to Western interests would still appear to be a
serious concern for the CIA and the American government.
Already there are signs that the forces adversely affected by
the radical economic programs adopted during the 18 months
following the coup against fascism are regaining their strength.
Whether they succeed or not in forcing a return to private capi-
talism where it was eliminated is uncertain. Their success will
depend in part on whether the more advanced provisions of the
new Constitution are enforced. The conservative decree of the
final "provisional" cabinet in July 1976, limiting workers' con-
trol of industry against the spirit if not the letter of the Constitu-
tion, is one ominous indicator.
Almost certainly the struggle will intensify for establishment
of a social democratic trade union movement, controlled by the
Socialist Party and affiliated with the ICFTU, as a rival for the
Communist Party-dominated Intersindical, which since January
1975 has been the only recognized national labor confederation.
Political warfare will also continue in other institutions such as
youth and student organizations, professional and cultural socie-
ties, and the public information media.
Plenty of work remains for the CIA and its Western European
Changes in the CIA in Portugal
77
allies in their efforts to prevent in Portugal the continuing left-
ward trend along the Mediterranean. The first task of disarming
the radical military units and preventing the spread of workers'
control and institutions of popular power seems to have been
achieved. The Communist Party of Portugal has had only limited
success in elections, and union among left-wing parties has also
been limited. For the time being NATO and Western European
capitalist solidarity has been preserved in Portugal, at least par-
tially thanks to intervention and "systematic, active encourage-
ment" from the Western Europeans and the CIA.
Of very high priority in the immediate future for the CIA and
its allies will be the prevention of a working coalition between
the Socialist Party and the Communist Party of Portugal on the
order of the Italian or French varieties. Should the current ani-
mosity prevailing between these two parties begin to diminish,
or should a common enemy such as Spinola's Portuguese Liber-
ation Army based in Spain become a real threat and thereby
unite the two parties, intensified political intervention will be
needed again. Continuing efforts to discredit and divide the
forces supporting the presidential campaign of Otelo Saraiva de
Carvalho should also be expected.
With earlier efforts now bearing fruit, but with a critical period
ahead, Whipple, Lawler, Marques, and their colleagues may
well find themselves with even more important and subtle re-
quirements for secret intervention.
The Turning Point:
The
Richard Welch
Affair
Introduction
When three masked gunmen drove into the wealthy Athens sub-
urb of Psychico in December 1975 and coolly assassinated the
CIA Chief of Station Richard S. Welch, they sent chills down
the spines of many thousands of operatives around the world.
But even in the immediate panic, the CIA brass in Langley set
out on one of their most clever media campaigns. Although
Welch had been named in the Athens News, an English-language
newspaper, as the local Chief of Station one month before his
death, the Agency knew he had also been named by CounterSpy
magazine as the Chief of Station in Peru, nearly a year earlier.
The CIA quickly disseminated the CounterSpy "connection"
and in a short-term victory managed to turn Welch into a martyr,
using his death to frighten many of its would-be reformers in
Congress and the press. The killing gave Congress an excuse to
back down and the press — at least in the United States — a pre-
text to lose interest.
Immediately after the assassination, a CIA spokesman an-
79
Introduction
nounced to the Associated Press that "we've had an American
gunned down by other Americans fingering him," and a White
House representative stated that the death was at least in part a
result of the publication of the name.
Only later did the truth come out. Well before the Athens
News published the letter naming Welch, the underground or-
ganization that killed him had been watching his residence,
which for years had been known in Athens as the home of the
CIA's Chief of Station in Greece. In fact, the CIA had even
warned Welch at the outset of his tour in Athens that his house
was marked, and he replied that he preferred to remain living
there.
Moreover, David Phillips, the head of the Association of For-
mer Intelligence Officers and arch-foe of CounterSpy, was re-
ported in the papers shortly after Welch's death to have received
a letter from him only four days previously, inviting him to
"come visit us in our home, which is very pleasant, if somewhat
notorious." Moreover, Diplomatic Lists published by the Greek
Foreign Ministry confirm the fact that the house was indeed well
known. As early as November 1959, the Chief of Station,
Laughlin Austin Campbell, lived two doors away, and in Decem-
ber 1968, Chief of Station James M. Potts moved to the house
which Welch later occupied.
The articles which follow detail the drama, including the com-
munique of the group which staged the assassination. Paul Ja-
cobs' article demonstrates where the moral outrage should lie.
Morton H. Halperin's research exposed the media manipulation
by the CIA. But it took more than a year for the full truth to
come out.
The Letter to
the Athens News
by The Committee of Greeks
and Greek Americans to
Prevent Their Country, Their
Fatherland From Being
Perverted to the Uses of the
CIA
Dear Reader:
The destructive activities of the CIA toward the Greek people
and the wrecking of our democratic freedoms by this same or-
ganization in the past has been written about in detail in the
press this past year. Much of this information is now out of date.
The CIA continues its evil work here and in this first letter to you
we intend to expose some of it to the light of public infamy. We
have contacts in other countries who have helped us collect this
material, but we have been able to gather most of the facts here.
We have concentrated on observing this enemy.
We have listened at the American Club in Kifissia, really a
hangout for spies, at certain cocktail circuits where the CIA
[This Letter to the Reader was published in the English-
language Athens News of November 25, 1975. under the
heading ' 'Greek Committee Reveals the CIA Menace in Ath-
ens."!
81
82
The Committee of Greeks and Greek- Americans
agents who stick together do not imagine we can deduce what
they are saying, and to a small extent, when needed, have we
had to shadow their coming and going from their buildings. First
we intend to expose the native American agents who have been
sent against us and save the Greek Americans for a later time.
Richard Welch
The CIA agents have been talking for months about the new
head of their group who has been here since the summer. He
followed Mr. Stacy Hulse, Jr. whose job was to keep General
Ioannidis in control, but he failed at this. For punishment he has
now been sent off to the small CIA group which they call a
station in Canada. The Athens group or station is now under the
head of Mr. Richard S. Welch. He is from Connecticut, where
he was born in 1929. Soon after he graduated from Harvard
University in 1951, he came to Athens where he worked using
JUSMAGG, the military aid organization, as a cover. It is for
the contacts that he made at that time and also because he
speaks Greek that he has been sent back here again. His job is to
see that the Karamanlis government does not get out of control.
He also served in Cyprus from 1960 to 1964. He then passed a
number of years in Latin America where he helped to control the
countries there on behalf of American imperialist interests. Just
before he came to Greece, he was in Peru. There was a bloody
revolt against the government of that country during which
many people lost their lives. It was charged that CIA was behind
this revolt. It was time for Mr. Welch to leave Latin America
even if Mr. Hulse had not failed in Greece.
Mr. Welch now uses American Embassy cover for his activi-
ties. He is listed as a First Secretary there. He lives in the usual
CIA house where all CIA Station Leaders have lived at No. 5
Queen Frederika in Psychico. The reader can telephone him for
his comments on these accusations at 671-2055.
Ronald Estes
Another change in the CIA organization is signified by the
arrival of Mr. Ronald E. Estes. He also worked in this country
several years back, usually in the north of Greece. He used the
JUSMAGG cover. He then served in Cyprus with Mr. Welch.
After that he joined the State Department for cover reasons and
The Letter to the Athens News
83
in 1966 and 1967 he was in Prague under the cover of an eco-
nomic officer. After a few years in America at the CIA center he
served in Beirut as an economic and commercial officer in the
American Embassy before coming to Athens. He is again under
the cover of JUSMAGG. Mr. Estes is known in CIA circuits as
an expert in Russian intelligence matters. In Athens he first
worked for a short period with Mr. Hulse, helping that station
leader with the impossible job of controlling General Ioannidis.
He is now working with Mr. Welch on the Greek matters. Mr.
Estes also lives in the well known CIA house on No. 12 Queen
Frederika in Psychico. The reader can telephone him for his
defense against these accusations at No. 671-4654.
William Lofgren
Another new CIA agent to arrive in Athens is Mr. William S.
Lofgren. This agent was completely exposed in the Greek news-
papers almost as soon as he arrived here. His previous service in
India and Lebanon was also exposed as was the fact that he was
expected to work on the Chinese, the Arabs, and the Greeks.
For the cover for his activities he uses the American Embassy
political office. He lives at No. 5 Kalvou in Psychico. His com-
ments can be obtained through telephone No. 671-3980.
When the last agent who was second in command of the CIA
station in Athens, Mr. James Baldwin, left the country after
many years, he was succeeded by Mr. Robert Larson who only
remained a short time. Mr. Larson was then succeeded by Mr.
James MacWilliams. He is a junior officer, but he has served
already in India.
He is an expert in Russian and Greek matters at the same
time. He lives in another CIA house at No. 13 Karsoli Dimitriou
in Philothei. He uses the cover of the Embassy political office
too. His comments can be obtained from his telephone No.
39-23-90.
A check of the JUSMAGG telephone book confirms that
many of the CIA agents exposed in the past — particularly the
experts in Russian matters as Mr. John Palavich, Mr. Stephen
Winsky, and Mr. William Bright — are still in Athens and at work
against us and friendly countries.
We have in mind next however to expose particularly Ameri-
cans of Greek origin. We believe that there remain a few new
agents of native American origin who we are checking on and if
84
we can establish that they are CIA agents in truth, we will in-
clude information on them along with that on the Greek
Americans.
With a firm plea for your support,
Committee of Greeks and Greek-Americans to Prevent Their
Country, Their Fatherland, From Being Perverted to the Uses of
the CIA.
News Stories:
Athens
From the Athens News
U.S. EMBASSY AIDE ASSASSINATED
(December 24, 1975)
A SPECIAL ASSISTANT TO THE UNITED STATES AM-
BASSADOR IN ATHENS, MR. RICHARD WELCH, WAS
ASSASSINATED OUTSIDE HIS HOME IN THE ATH-
ENS SUBURB OF PSYCHICO LATE YESTERDAY AF-
TERNOON BY ONE OF THREE UNIDENTIFIED,
MASKED GUNMEN, WHO WERE SEEN SPEEDING
AWAY IN WHAT WAS DESCRIBED AS A "BLACK"
CAR AFTERWARDS
The motive for the killing is not immediately known and police,
aided by U.S. Embassy security staff, have begun an investiga-
[These articles appeared in the Athens News on the dates
given, and typify stories around the world, including the
mention of CounterSpy from the beginning.]
85
#6
The Athens News
tion into the killing. The immediate vicinity of the shooting has
been cordoned off by order of the Athens Suburbs Chief of
Police and the Athens Suburbs Security Police.
Police sources say that the gunmen fired three times, at point-
blank range. One of the bullets apparently penetrated the vic-
tim's brain. Athens News received confirmation from the Athens
Emergency Hospital that Mr. Welch was dead on arrival at the
hospital.
Mr. Welch was born in Connecticut and graduated from Har-
vard University. He spoke fluent Greek and originally came to
Athens with the JUSMAGG military aid program. He has also
served in Latin America prior to his present posting in Greece.
Mr. Welch was returning home after attending a reception at
the residence of the American Ambassador. He had just left his
car when the gunmen drew up and opened fire.
GROUP CLAIMS CREDIT FOR ASSASSINATION
(December 24, 1975)
An organization called the "Union of Officers for the National
Ideal," has claimed credit for the attack on the American diplo-
mat Richard Welch. The group made the claim in an anonymous
telephone call Wednesday morning to an Athens evening
newspaper.
On the other hand, a [Greek] government communique pub-
lished Wednesday morning declared that "the cowardly assas-
sins of the American diplomat Richard Welch are, at least from
the point of view of their mentality, foreigners to the Greek
people, to honor, and the national interests, which they have
tried to injure."
RICHARD WELCH WAS THE CIA CHIEF IN GREECE
(December 25, 1975)
Richard Welch, the "special assistant to the U.S. Ambassador"
in Athens who was assassinated in the Greek capital Tuesday by
three unknown assailants, was actually an official of the CIA,
according to the Intelligence Documentation Center, a private
group in Washington which was founded three years ago by
critics of American intervention in Vietnam, and which special-
izes in revealing the activities of the American intelligence
services.
News Stories: Athens
87
CounterSpy, a publication of the group, identified Mr. Welch
as the CIA chief in Peru from 1972 to the beginning of this year.
Last February 8, while Mr. Welch was still in the American
Embassy in Lima, a spokesman for the Peruvian Ministry of
Foreign Affairs intimated to a Washington press conference that
the CIA had been implicated in the rioting that took place in Peru
at the time.
The spokesman, Mr. Oscar Faura, charged that the disorders
had been orchestrated with a view to provoking tension with
Chile.
Until now the Department of State has refused to specify Mr.
Welch's exact duties in the Embassy in Athens. The CIA has
equally held back from any comment.
GOVERNMENT VOWS TO DISCOVER THE KILLERS
(December 27, 1975)
The bullets of the unknown assassins of Richard Welch, have
caused great concern in government circles.
From the moment Premier Karamanlis was informed of the
event, he kept continual telephone contact with Foreign Minis-
ter Bitsios and Press Undersecretary Lambrias. According to
authoritative sources, the Premier has decided to discontinue his
Christmas vacation and return to Athens as soon as possible.
Tuesday night the Greek government issued a statement de-
ploring the crime and assuring that the Greek authorities would
do all in their power to discover the assassins.
Describing the assassins as cowards, the statement stressed
that they could not possibly belong to the Greek people, whose
honor and national interests they have deliberately tried to
harm.
The statement added that the Greek government and appropri-
ate authorities will do all in their power to discover the hideous
criminals.
The Ministers of Coordination and National Defense, P. Papa-
ligouras and E. Averof , acting on instructions of the Prime Min-
ister late Tuesday night, called on the U.S. Ambassador in Ath-
ens, Jack Kubisch, and expressed deep sympathy at Welch's
assassination.
A. Vakalopoulos, diplomatic counselor to the President of the
Republic, also called on the U.S. Ambassador and expressed
Mr. Tsatsos' grief.
88
The Athens News
Public Order Minister Solon Ghikas announced yesterday that
action has been taken from the very first moment for the appre-
hension of the assassins. Measures have also been taken to pre-
vent them from escaping abroad.
Meanwhile, a meeting was held yesterday morning at the Pub-
lic Order Ministry. The participants in the meeting included po-
lice and gendarmerie officials and members of the National Se-
curity Service (YPEA).
During the meeting it is believed that existing evidence was
closely examined and measures of further action considered.
The murder has also resulted in extra police protection for all
U.S. diplomats in Athens.
Police sources said that extra protection is also being provided
for 10 Russians whose names were distributed in a report
handed out by a group called "The Committee to keep Greece
Greek." The Russians were accused of using their diplomatic
cover here for spying activities.
Welch's assassination is reportedly thought to have some con-
nection with the recent kidnapping of ministers of OPEC
countries.
Meanwhile, the American Embassy issued the following com-
munique yesterday morning:
"The U.S. Embassy confirms that R. S. Welch, an envoy of
the American Embassy, was shot and killed right in front of his
home by unknown assailants.
"The Embassy is keeping contact with the authorities who are
searching for the culprits. The Embassy will not disclose further
details until the outcome of the search is made known and until
close relatives are informed. ' '
REWARD OFFERED FOR WELCH'S KILLER
(December 30, 1975)
The Greek government today put a price on the heads of three
unidentified men who shot dead American CIA agent Richard
Welch in an Athens suburb last Tuesday.
The Ministry of Public Order said a decree in the official Ga-
zette offered five million drachmas (about £75,000 sterling) for
information leading to the arrest of the three men.
One to two million drachmas (about £15,000 to 30,000 ster-
ling) would be paid for any information which might help police
in their investigation.
News Stories: Athens
89
The three men killed Welch as he returned home from a
Christmas party. They fled in a car and six days after the murder
police are still seeking them.
Mr. Welch, 46, held the post of Special Assistant to U.S.
Ambassador Jack Kubisch but the White House has acknowl-
edged he was a Central Intelligence Agency man.
A secret political group claimed responsibility yesterday for
the assassination. The group said in a statement sent to foreign
news agencies that the "execution" was to demonstrate that the
Greek government and Army were under the control of U.S.
imperialism.
The group called itself "Organization of 17 November," after
the date of a 1973 student revolt against the military regime of
former president George Papadopoulos.
WELCH'S BROTHER PUTS BLAME ON COUNTERSPY
(January 1, 1976)
The family of slain Central Intelligence Agency official Richard
S. Welch knew of his work but never thought much about the
potential danger of the job, his brother said.
"I heard about his death after finishing Christmas shopping in
downtown Providence," George P. Welch, a 47-year-old sales-
man, said Tuesday. "It came as a tremendous shock."
"He never said he had any feeling about danger although in
retrospect he must have known there was some. He just thought
the job he did was very important. He was a very patriotic
fellow."
Richard Welch, 46, was shot down by three masked men in
Athens last week. His body was returned to the United States
Tuesday for burial at Arlington national cemetery.
In an interview, George Welch said he believed his brother
joined the Agency shortly after his graduation from Harvard
University in 1951. He said his brother told him he was joining
the Agency but never discussed details of his work.
Richard Welch, bom in Hartford, Connecticut, grew up in
nearby Providence and attended classical high school, getting
honor grades. "He was a hard worker," George Welch said.
"He studied Greek in school. He loved Greece."
Welch said he considered it wrong for CounterSpy, a Wash-
ington publication, to publish the names of agents, including that
of his brother. The magazine had disclosed Welch's role before
90
The Athens News
he was slain and a similar description was printed in the English-
language Athens News.
"For a foreign paper like Athens News, there's not much you
can do," he said. "But for an American publication to put an-
other American in jeopardy is reprehensible," said George
Welch.
The Fifth Estate
Responds
by The Organizing Committee
for a Fifth Estate
The attempts of CIA officials, both current and retired, and their
supporters to cast the Fifth Estate with even partial responsibil-
ity for the death of the CIA Station Chief in Athens, Greece, is
an attack on all Americans who have had the courage to voice
opposition to this secret police force and the anti-democratic
corporate empire it serves. In an hysterical campaign, similar to
classical CIA propaganda operations abroad, the CIA is attempt-
ing to shift the onerous history of 30 years of villainous rampage
against the people of the world to those who have exposed the
truth of CIA murders and lies.
Reactionary elements of the Press have been stampeded into
thoughtless commentary in contradiction to the facts known to
their own journalists. Right-wing thugs have threatened to kill
members of the Fifth Estate, Congress, and a Presidential candi-
date. Even the President has lent his support to this campaign.
[This press release was issued by the publishers of Counter-
Spy magazine on December 28, 1975, in Washington, D.C.]
91
92
The Fifth Estate
But the Press overreacting to confusing events is nothing new or
unmanageable. The ravings of rightist cowards rarely initiate
political change. And we doubt if this is the first or last time
Jerry Ford will be deceived by the CIA.
We are not intimidated and this campaign will ultimately fail.
We are grieved that Mrs. Welch is now a widow and her
family is without a father. We do not condone or support this
shooting. But we do understand why Mr. Welch was killed. This
CIA Station Chief died as a direct result of world-wide hostility
which the CIA has helped generate against the United States. As
a CI A operative, Welch knew that his role in coordinating covert
operations to secure the exploitive investment climate for mul-
tinational corporations could, someday, lead to his death.
Throughout the world people are demonstrating that the age
of economic exploitation and political repression brought by
CIA assassination, coups d'etat, secret wars, massive illegal do-
mestic spying, lies, and deception must now come to a close.
The possibility of violent retribution for this exploitation and
repression must now be a fact of life with CIA agents.
For many Greeks, the name of the CIA brings back horrid
memories of U.S. -supported torture, brutal imprisonment, and
death from a CIA-installed military dictatorship. These memo-
ries are freshened by Greek anger at CIA intervention recently
in Cyprus. Such emotions based on political fact are felt by
many throughout the world. In Greece, these emotions led to
months of demonstrations and official denouncements before
this shooting.
However, if anyone is to blame for Mr. Welch's death, it is
the CIA that sent him to Greece to spy and intervene in the
affairs of the Greek people and to rendezvous with a death sym-
bolic of the horrible essence of the CIA. When the Athens News
publicly identified him, there was no excuse for the CIA to keep
him there. The blood of Mr. Welch is on the hands of the CIA
and its supporters and not on the pages of CounterSpy.
CounterSpy, the quarterly journal of the Fifth Estate, has a
policy of publishing names of CIA operatives in its feature ' 'CIA
Around the World: We Thought You'd Like to Know." Any
names of CIA officials published by the foreign or American
press will be reprinted in CounterSpy. We reprint the names to
demonstrate to the American people the pervasiveness of CIA
activities. Reprinting names reinforces political fact and demys-
tifies the power of the CIA. The Station Chief in most countries
The Fifth Estate Responds
93
is well known to both the governments, political parties, foreign
press as well as those opposed to the CIA presence in their
countries. Only those who live in the United States are denied
this information. We believe Americans have a right to know
what acts are being committed in our name and who are the
perpetrators of these acts. Reprinting these names is one way
for us to protest the existence of the CIA and the covert actions
it implements without sanction from the American people.
Richard Welch was identified first in 1967 in a German book,
Who's Who in the CIA, which has been widely distributed
throughout the world. More recently his name appeared in Span-
ish language newspapers in Peru. Maryknoll priests while in
Peru jotted his and other CIA operatives' names down and dur-
ing a visit to Washington, D.C., asked us for confirmation that
Welch was indeed with the CIA. By using documents published
by the Department of State and freely available to the public, we
made this confirmation and reprinted his name in CounterSpy.
But his move to Greece was unknown to us and we have had no
contact with the Greek newspaper that identified him. It is a
fragile coincidence that links CounterSpy to these events.
If the CIA believes it can continue this charade of focusing
blame on its opposition, it is foolish. The questions which will be
asked once the hysteria has dissipated are: Why was Richard
Welch recently transferred to Greece? What has the CIA
planned for the people in that region of the world? What is the
CIA doing there now? What was Richard Welch, and what are
those who have replaced him, doing in Peru?
If the CIA continues to intervene in the affairs of all countries,
including Greece and Peru, or to suppress national patriotic lib-
eration movements and the popular opposition to the CIA and its
corporate masters, similar events will undoubtedly occur. The
movement against the CIA is not responsible for these occur-
rences. The CIA, with its murderers and torturers, has now
added the blood of one of its own to the long list of victims it has
denied life.
Communique
by The November 17
Revolutionary Organization
[Editors' Note: As the communique notes, the day of the as-
sassination of Richard Welch, this group sent its first commu-
nique to the Athens media. Although it was referred to in the
Athens News, it was never published, in Greece or elsewhere.
Several weeks later the group apparently mailed this lengthy
communique to numerous media, including Liberation. For
many months the editors of Liberation debated the genuineness
of the communique. Nearly a year later, a police officer of the
deposed junta, noted for his brutality, was murdered with, ac-
cording to Greek authorities, the same weapon. Liberation de-
cided the communique was authentic, and published large parts
of it. While the communique appears genuine, many Greek left-
ists do not believe that this organization was part of their move-
ment. The entire communique is published here for the first
time; the portions which did not appear in Liberation are in
brackets.]
[This communique was issued in early 1976, with copies
mailed to various newspapers and magazines. On December
24, 1976, large portions of it were published, in French, in
Liberation, in Paris, France.)
94
Communique
95
[The Truth about the Execution of Richard
Welch (Chief of the CIA Station in Greece)
and the Manipulation of Public Opinion in
Greece and Abroad]
[On December 23, 1975, Richard Welch, First Secretary at the
American Embassy — but in fact Chief of the CIA Station in
Greece — was returning home with his wife and driver after a
reception given by the U.S. Ambassador. At the moment he was
entering his house, a commando unit of three members of the
Greek Revolutionary Organization "November 17" executed
him, immobilizing his wife and driver. A mystery has intention-
ally been created around this action. Through a broad and stupe-
fying operation, the Greek government, with the collaboration
of the press, has been able to bolster, in an odd way, the line
inside the CIA: Welch had some enemies inside the CIA, who
shot him, or he was killed by the KGB. Even today, two months
after the execution, few people in Greece or abroad know the
truth.]
[Facing this mystery and confusion, we find ourselves obli-
gated to appeal to the foreign press to reestablish the truth. For
the first time, we are going to explain exactly how we carried out
this action. We are going to explain why the mystery and confu-
sion exist. And we are going to prove through the details we
reveal for the first time that the letter in the Athens News had no
link whatsoever with our operation. It is merely a coincidence
that this expose appeared a month before our operation. Our
decision, as well as our investigation of Welch, came well be-
fore, as the explanations below will prove, and which can be
verified by the Americans and the Greek Criminal Investigation
Department.]
[The day after the action, the newspapers discussed the event
on the front page, and could not hide the real activities of Welch,
because of the revelations in the Athens News. They began to
attack the criminal activities of the CIA in this country in mys-
tery-style articles. They wrote that Welch was the instigator of
events in Cyprus in 1964; that he was a specialist in the "desta-
bilization" and overthrow of governments, that he was working
closely with Ambassador Kubisch, who was Kissinger's advisor
for Chilean affairs during the Allende regime, etc.]
[So these articles on the CIA and its criminal activities in
Greece led more and more people to justify and to approve of
The November 1 7 Revolutionary Organization
the execution, even within the Karamanlis party. Since the ac-
tion had these important repercussions, and was generating ap-
proval and even enthusiasm among the masses, the government
decided to act quickly. The first measure was to forbid the publi-
cation of all information on Welch. This measure was respected
in part by the newspapers, which nevertheless continued to dis-
cuss the CIA over the next several weeks. At the same time, the
government has interrogated, searched, and followed approxi-
mately 2,000 left activists; put up a reward for us of the fabulous
(for Greece) sum of five million drachma; and undertaken a most
important operation of confusion and manipulation. They
passed "information" to Greek journalists, to "prove" this ac-
tion was an internal CIA affair, or the consequence of a struggle
with the KGB.]
[The government did everything possible to spread confusion,
to create mystery, and to hide the truth: that simple activists
with relatively simple means could have "hit" the CIA Chief of
Station in Greece.]
[So the unfolding of the operation has been described a dozen
times in the newspapers in mystery-style articles with details
which give the reader the impression that something is fishy. The
newspapers invented theories: the fact that three bullets were
shot proves that we were professionals from the secret services,
who are the only people who act this way. They asked: How did
we know the driver was not armed, and that he was not going to
shoot back? Just another proof that we were CIA agents. How
did we know the time that Welch was supposed to return? We
were waiting for him at the very second he got back. So, we had
an informant in the Ambassador's house. This action was too
well organized, too scientific to be done by Greek activists, who
are not capable of such precision. A "liberal" newspaper con-
sidered it suspect that Mrs. Welch and the driver were not also
executed. Professionals do not leave any witnesses unless they
are sure they will not talk. All of this crap finally created confu-
sion and doubt in the masses.]
[Yet all the newspapers knew the truth from the very first day!
The very evening of the operation, we sent to all of them some
political texts where we explained the reasons for this operation.
The same evening we called three newspapers claiming credit
for the action and telling them where to go to get the texts that
we left for them in different parts of Athens. Finally, that same
evening, we distributed tracts in other areas of Athens.]
Communique
97
[Three days later, the 26th of December, faced with the atti-
tude of the press, we sent a letter to the newspapers denouncing
all the lies which were appearing. The press did not mention any
of this, and on the contrary continued their romance. Some
journalists, even from left-wing newspapers, claimed that they
were holding information from absolutely reliable sources, prov-
ing it was the CIA, and challenging anyone to contradict them.
They were issuing challenges, but they were carefully hiding the
truth.]
[In these texts, we explained that we had decided to execute
Richard Welch as an example, because as CIA Chief of Station
in Athens he was responsible, as well as the other professional
agents, for all the crimes committed by American Imperialism,
and particularly by the CIA against our people. Among them,
the most important: setting up and supporting the Fascist Dicta-
torship for seven years; and the coup in Cyprus in July 1975,
with thousands dead and 200,000 refugees. Welch, as a Sta-
tion Chief, had a direct responsibility. He was not a minor offi-
cial, a simple executive.]
[The main problem in Greece is its dependence on American
Imperialism. The Karamanlis government has never done any-
thing about this, and finds itself tied to the Americans. Getting
out of NATO remains only words. The American bases and the
ships of the Sixth Fleet are still here. Even more, Americans,
considering Greece as a safe country, are in the process, accord-
ing to the Greek newspapers, of moving the General Staff of the
CIA for the Middle East and the offices of the multinationals
from Beirut to Athens. The graffiti "exo i American i" ("out with
the Americans"), which was the main cry during the popular
insurrection of November 1973 and which was still dominant
after the fall of the dictatorship, has been seen by millions of
demonstrators going past the American Embassy this last No-
vember 17. The Americans are still the masters here; the govern-
ment cannot do anything; all that is left for us is to go on with the
struggle against them, using simultaneously both pacific and le-
gal means of struggle, and other means of struggle.]
On the other hand, neither Welch's wife nor his driver had any
direct responsibility for the crimes committed by the CIA
against our people. That is why he, and only he, was executed.
And these are the unique reasons we chose the method we did.
We wanted to exclude any possibility of harming others, even by
accident. We wanted to carry out the action correctly and effi-
98
The November 17 Revolutionary Organization
ciently. And that is why we had to take more risks in stopping
our car and getting out of it, instead of choosing an easier way,
such as throwing a bomb or a grenade, or using a machine gun
from our car. In such a case we might have hit someone besides
Welch.
[The Investigation and the Operation]
The former Station Chief, Stacy Hulse, left Athens on May
30, 1975. He was living in the same house, 5 Vassilis Frederikis,
in Psychico. Welch arrived in Athens around the ISth of June.
He lived for three weeks in the villa of the Deputy Chief of the
CIA, Ronald Estes, number 12 of the same street. For a month
or so, the villa was closed. Welch moved in to number 5 on
Wednesday, July 9. His driver was also different; he was not the
same one Hulse used to have, contrary to what the newspapers
wrote. We learned the name of Welch and his function through a
very easy means, which we will not reveal for the moment.
Welch left with his driver every morning around 8:30 a.m.,
and returned between 6:30 and 7:30 p.m. His driver would park
his own car, an AMI-6, orange, registered as BE-9339, along the
sidewalk, near the villa. He would get the black Ford, registered
as CD3-131 , out of the garden, and drive Welch to the Embassy.
Welch went out at night very seldom, contrary to the Deputy,
who went out nearly every night. Welch was always home be-
fore 1 1 :00 p.m. On weekends, he would go out during the day,
using, since the end of September, a second car, a white Mus-
tang registered as CD3- 181, which he kept in the garage.
[What struck us was that these professional killers considered
Greece so safe that they never took any security measures. We
thought they must have had some bodyguards, but nothing.
They felt safe, like at home. Only after the November 17 demon-
stration did they become scared, and barricade themselves at
home. Welch did not go out for the next two weeks, even on
weekends, and did not park his car along the sidewalk, outside
the villa, as he used to do fairly often before.]
[On July 27, Sunday, Welch ate lunch at 1:30 p.m. with his
father at the Theoxenis de Kifissia Restaurant. He drove his car.
He never took any security measures, except that he always
looked intently at the people who passed him. He wore grey
pants and a blue summer shirt. As he had parked the car a bit
away, and his father was tired, he walked about 50 meters to the
car and backed it down to his father.]
Communique
99
Welch went to the movies on Tuesday, November 1 1 , at 6:30
p.m. (to the Astron Theater in the Ambelokipi area), with his
wife and another woman, to see Godfather II. That night he was
driving his white Mustang, which he parked along the sidewalk,
near the theater, leaving his key on the dashboard. They sat in
the balcony and left about 10:00 p.m. That night, the black Ford
was parked along the sidewalk in front of the main entrance to
the villa, and when they arrived home around 10:30, the condi-
tions for the operation were ideal. While Welch was parking the
Mustang in the garage, the two women went into the house; then
he came out through the garage door, walked 15 meters in the
darkness toward the black Ford to park it in the garden. We
passed by him while he was walking, and it would have been
very easy for us to shoot him. There was nobody around.
We give these details to show that we had decided on the
operation and begun the investigation of Welch as soon as he
arrived in Athens, that is to say, far before the publication of the
Athens News letter of November 23.
The Operation
The operation itself happened as follows. The car we used
was neither a Mercedes nor a Fiat, as described in the press. It
was a light green Simca that we had "expropriated" on Decem-
ber 1 2, in the Pagrati area. The night of December 23, we real-
ized that Welch had gone out. The black Ford was not in the
garden as it was every day after 7:30 p.m., and the driver's car
was parked by the sidewalk. We deduced that Welch had gone to
some reception with the driver. We did not know if there were
two, three, or four in the car, but our action plan covered these
possibilities. We parked the car around 9:00 p.m. on the left side
of Mazaraki Street, approximately halfway down the street, and
we waited. We knew he would pass by this place, as he always
did, and we would wait till 11:00 p.m. at the latest. At 10:23, we
saw the black Ford, and we let it pass by. When it got to the
intersection of Vassileos Pavlou and Mazaraki streets, we
started the car and followed them slowly. We let them go down
further a little and they parked in front of the garden door,
perpendicular to the sidewalk in order to go into the garden. The
driver got out of the car, opened the left rear door, and Mrs.
Welch got out; then he turned to open the gate of the garden. At
that precise moment, we turned left, and we parked slowly, right
behind the Ford, on the left side of the street. The three of us got
100
The November 17 Revolutionary Organization
out of the car immediately, with our faces covered. As they saw
us, the driver turned, and said, like it was a joke, "What's
happening?" The comrade who was supposed to fire, ordered,
"Hands up!" and went over to the right door, where he saw
Welch, who had just gotten out of the car. The second comrade
threatened Mrs. Welch and the driver with his machine gun. The
third of us came around on the right to cut off any flight by
Welch to the main door of the villa. The comrade who was to
shoot, came closer to Welch and ordered again, "Hands up!"
Welch, who spoke good Greek, answered in English, "What?"
At this point the comrade fired three shots in rapid succession
with his pistol, a Colt .45. With the first shot, Welch fell down.
The driver, as soon as he heard the first shot, hid behind the
Ford. Mrs. Welch remained still, near us, looking at us. She did
not say anything and did not move. Immediately, we went back
into the car, and left as follows: we turned left on Tsakona
Street and left again into Narkissou Street. Straight ahead till
Amary lidos where we went left and then right onto Yakinton
Street, where we abandoned the car, near the comer of Papadia-
manti Street. From there, we drove away in another car, taking
all our belongings.
As incredible as it seems, the Simca that we used was not
found by the police for more than a week after the action, even
though it was less than one kilometer from the scene of the
action, and did not have a license plate. In passing along Kifissia
Avenue, which is a main street, it could still be seen. A week
later, December 30, we decided to call the newspapers, giving its
description. [And we did this so the owner could have it back.
We had placed ten cassettes, which were in the car, under the
front seat, and we told the newspapers this, because we thought
the police might take them and say we stole them. Tuesday, we
called Ta Nea and Eleftherotypia.] The next day, the car was
still there, so Thursday evening, we called the English journalist
Tonge, and the next day the police took the car.
[The police hid their inability, and did not want to confess that
in looking for Fiats and Mercedes, they had failed to discover
our car. Two or three days after our phone calls to the newspa-
pers, they announced that they had discovered this Simca, but
they said they were not sure it was used in the operation. They
even said they left it as a trap, to see who would steal it! They
never revealed our phone calls establishing that we were the
ones who had carried out the operation.]
Communique
101
We have described the operation in such detail only to show
that there is no mystery at all. To show that everything was
organized and done in a very simple way. To show that it was us
who carried out this operation.
The government, the press, and the political parties dare not
say the truth — and this is the significance and the impact of the
action on the population. They have preferred talking about
"instigators" of the Junta, because they realized that their sup-
porters and the common people approved of our action, even
asking themselves why it had not been done earlier, in view of
the enormous crimes committed by the CIA against the Greek
people. And this was the logical and simple thing which people
had begun to think, before the newspapers began to "doubt.' '
Who Is
Richard Welch?
by Paul Jacobs*
On January 17, 1969, the FBI helped murder Black Panther
member John Huggins in a dining hall at UCLA.
Oh, an FBI agent did not actually pull the trigger — that was
done by a member of US, a black nationalist group. But, mor-
ally, the FBI must share responsibility in his death, for the Bu-
reau now admits that it fomented dissension and fierce fights
between US and the Black Panthers.
I was particularly angered by this latest revelation of wrong-
doing by a federal agency, because John Huggins was my friend.
A gentle, thoughtful young man, he was on his way to achieving
a position of leadership in the Black Panthers. If he had lived,
[This article appeared in the Winter 1976 issue of Counter-
Spy magazine which appeared in February 1976.]
*Paul Jacobs died while this book was in preparation. He
was a valiant fighter for justice, and he and his work will be
long remembered and appreciated.
102
Who Is Richard Welch?
103
Huggins would have helped make the organization into an un-
usually effective voice. With his murder, the Panthers lost, the
black community lost — the whole country lost.
Paradoxically, the words that I have used to describe Huggins
have the same eulogistic ring as those widely used to character-
ize Richard Welch, the CIA Station Chief in Athens who was
murdered on his doorstep in mid-December shortly after his
name was made public by radical periodicals here and abroad.
Now portrayed as a victim of a cabal that would betray our
national-security apparatus, Welch has been virtually canonized
as a national hero.
Not so with John Huggins, victim of truly sinister government
activity, who goes unhonored. And what of the FBI? Its com-
plicity in his murder rates just an asterisk in its laundry list of
dirty tricks.
Meanwhile, the people who published the fact that Richard
Welch was a CIA agent are pilloried savagely, much as were
those of us who, a few years ago, charged that U.S. agencies
were stirring up trouble in New Left and militant racial organiza-
tions. Back then, they called us "paranoid."
Not many people believed what we said about the FBI, de-
spite the hard evidence we assembled. Nor did many believe us
when we insisted the CIA was engaged in continuous efforts to
assassinate foreign leaders and overthrow certain governments.
Most distressing, however, is the fact that, even after top FBI
and CIA officials have admitted past misdeeds, most Americans
have yet to understand that such activities are directly related to
our government's policies, foreign and domestic.
Instead, it is generally assumed that provocation, assassina-
tion and intervention are ugly but necessary tasks carried out by
patriotic citizens acting on orders from superiors. Endowed with
the federal government's dignity and institutionalized in an
agency like the CIA, murder and assassination (known in the
trade as "termination with prejudice") have become, in the
name of patriotism, ethically acceptable.
As a result, each time the names of CIA agents are made
public (it happened again last week), the media and government
officials have fulminated. Over and over we have been told that
Welch was a gentle man, motivated by the highest of ideals,
fluent in many languages, a man on his way up in the CIA hier-
archy, a man, who, almost blind in one eye, never fired a
weapon himself.
104
Paul Jacobs
This flood of posthumous praise only diverts the public from
the crucial questions, which have to do not with the man's per-
sonal attributes but with his political activities.
How does the CIA Station Chief in Greece — or any other
Station Chief anywhere in the world, for that matter — spend his
days? And nights? And weekends? Did Richard Welch simply sit
in his office and translate Greek newspaper stories into English?
Is it not possible that this gentle CIA official, who may never
have fired a gun himself, issued orders that required other
agents, perhaps family men themselves, to fire guns and kill
Greeks or Cypriots or South Americans? And if he did this, why
should anyone be surprised that he might be killed on his own
doorstep?
These are cruel questions, but they need to be answered —
along with other, equally significant, questions. For example,
the CIA has admitted it tried, on a number of occasions, to kill
Fidel Castro. Secret agents failed in that effort, but how many
ordinary Cubans who supported Castro did the CIA manage to
have murdered? Cuban officials insist such killings took place,
and if they are correct, what justification can the CIA offer for
those actions?
Even when committed under the banner of patriotism, these
are foul deeds. It is those who blow the whistle on the CIA who
deserve our praise, not the agents who commit or commission
murder in faraway lands.
The FBI is no less sensitive than the CIA about the operations
of its agents provocateur in domestic politics. I discovered this
several years ago when I wrote and narrated a segment of the
Great American Dream Machine, a magazine-like TV program
that ran on public television. In that report, three paid informers
discussed on camera how they had been instructed by FBI
agents (whom they named) to provoke violence, blow up
bridges, and if necessary kill — all to bring disrepute to the left.
I attempted to get statements from the agents themselves and
from the Bureau, but all efforts failed. Then, a couple of days
before the telecast date, J. Edgar Hoover joined the agents in
threatening libel suits. Hoover even said he was preparing to
turn the case over to the Justice Department (which, of course,
is exactly what the CIA is now attempting to do with those who
published Welch's name).
One hour before the program was to be aired, top manage-
ment of the Public Broadcasting Service canceled the FBI seg-
Who Is Richard Welch?
105
ment. It was broadcast later by Channel 13 in New York as part
of a different kind of program concentrating on the cancellation
itself rather than on the propriety of FBI actions.
This change of focus is, of course, what is happening today in
the Welch matter: attention is being shifted to the wrong con-
cern. The current furor is over the naming of names, not over
the propriety of illicit political activity by federal agencies.
Many people have been hurt by the actions of the CIA and
FBI, directly or indirectly. Some have been killed, and not al-
ways for very good reasons — my friend John Huggjns among
them.
For Huggins, I feel deep grief. So, too, for Richard Welch, the
human being. But for Richard Welch, the CIA agent, I cannot
mourn. After all, no one has to work for the CIA or FBI. It's a
matter of free choice; if agents don't like their work, they can
quit, as some have done.
To me, it seems inevitable that the CIA's political murders
should be followed by reprisals against its agents. Perhaps mur-
ders and countermurders should not take place in a civilized
world, but it should come as no real surprise — nor cause grief —
when a CIA agent gets killed in the line of "duty."
When you work for the CIA, as Richard Welch did, you make
enemies. And when you make enemies you may get killed — it is
as simple as that.
CIA News
Management
by Morton H. Halperin
When Richard Welch arrived in Athens in June 1975, to become
the CIA Station Chief, his superiors at the Agency's Langley,
Virginia, headquarters were concerned about his safety. Their
anxiety did not stem from the fact that some months earlier an
American publication called CounterSpy had identified him as
former Station Chief in Peru. Rather, the concern was based on
Welch's choice of residence.
The house in an Athens suburb had been the residence of a
succession of station chiefs over many years and was widely
known in the Greek capital as such. The officials at CIA head-
quarters, aware of these facts, also knew that anti- Americanism
was at a fever pitch in Greece, with much of the antagonism
directed at the CIA.
It was decided to warn Welch. In keeping with the deference
[This article first appeared in the Washington Post on Janu-
ary 23, 1977.]
106
CIA News Management
107
traditionally accorded a field representative by CIA headquar-
ters, Welch was given no clear, unequivocal order not to move
into the old residence. However, sources who have seen the
pertinent CIA cable — it has never been released but was re-
ferred to briefly in the Senate Intelligence Committee report —
say it all but instructed Welch to find another home.
The combined judgment of the people at headquarters, the
cable said, was that it would be wisest for him to live elsewhere.
Welch was advised in the strongest possible terms that there
would be concern for his safety should he move into the tradi-
tional residence. Reportedly, there was specific reference to the
danger of assassination.
Welch was unpersuaded. Back to Langley went a cable saying
that, for administrative convenience and other reasons, Welch
would take the chance.
All of this was well known at CIA headquarters when news
arrived that Welch had been shot to death as he and his wife
returned home late at night from a Christmas party at the Ameri-
can Ambassador's home. But none of this pertinent information
was made public at the time. Instead, the CIA swung into action
with a classic "disinformation" campaign directed not at some
hostile intelligence agency or enemy nation but at the American
public.
The CIA's then-press spokesman, Angus Thuermer, began
calling the reporters who normally cover the intelligence agen-
cies. Thuermer, as was his habit, spoke on deep background; the
newsmen could use the information but not attribute it to any
source.
What Thuermer said was that Welch had been identified as a
CIA agent in CounterSpy, the magazine published by an anti-
CIA group called the Fifth Estate. He did not tell the reporters
that the CIA had warned Welch not to live in the house in front
of which he was killed or that the house was known in Athens as
the home of the CIA Station Chief.
Accepted Line
The point here is not whether the assassins learned of Welch's
identity because of the CounterSpy article or his choice of resi-
dence — it is well known that in most capitals, particularly in
Western countries, anyone who really wants to learn the CIA
chief's name can do so. The point is rather that the CIA engaged
108
MortonH. Halperin
in news management immediately after his death to make a polit-
ical point.
The disinformation campaign was a success. The stories filed
out of Washington on Welch's death that night all noted that he
had been listed in CounterSpy. None mentioned the CIA warn-
ings to Welch as to his place of residence.
The message was underlined when a CIA official, permitting
himself to be identified as a "U.S. intelligence source," told the
Associated Press that "we've had an American gunned down by
other Americans fingering him — right or wrong — as a CIA
agent." A few days later the White House press spokesman said
Welch's death had come at least in part as a result of publication
of his name. The Washington Post reflected typical journalistic
acceptance of the CIA line when it said editorially that Welch's
murder "was the entirely predictable result of the disclosure
tactics chosen by certain American critics of the Agency."
Thus, the Welch murder has become part of CIA mythology.
The assassination was, of course, tragic and inexcusable, but the
aftermath points to the dangers of permitting an intelligence
agency to use the flow of information to distort public debate on
vital issues.
What They Do
How and Why
Introduction
Naming names is only part of the effort. Understanding some of
the motivations and mechanics of the Agency is extremely im-
portant. The data collection goals of intelligence work, and the
use of vehicles outside the Agency's normal diplomatic or mili-
tary covers are often overlooked. The following two selections
give some idea of the scope of the intelligence inquiry, quite
apart from direct involvement in the internal affairs of other
nations, and of some of the intricate methods whereby the
Agency operates outside the embassies and the consulates.
KIQs — Key Intelligence Questions — are just that, the funda-
mental economic, political, and social information the govern-
ment seeks from its operatives in order to plan policy. In 1976
Philip Agee received through the mail from "an admirer" a copy
of a confidential memorandum by Henry Kissinger outlining
eight KIQs issued by the Director of Central Intelligence. The
memo, which has been authenticated, and an analysis by Agee,
follow this introduction.
109
no
Introduction
The use of businesses owned in whole or in part by the Agen-
cy — "proprietaries" — is widespread. John Marks' "The CIA's
Corporate Shell Game" gives some idea of the scope and the
intricacies of this facet of the espionage routine.
What Uncle Sam
Wants to Know
About You:
The KIQs
by Philip Agee and
Henry Kissinger
So often in the business of spying the most important activities
— far from being the most exciting — tend to be the most boring
and tedious. This is especially so with respect to the critical
process of deciding how to allocate the limited number of spies
and technical collection devices. Somehow, intelligence collec-
tion priorities must be decided on all levels from the individual
operations officer managing several different operations to the
Director of Central Intelligence and his staff in the CIA Head-
quarters. For, without the conscious and painfully deliberate
"targeting" of intelligence collection "assets," the information
the President and other top policy makers need is likely to be
incomplete.
[This document, with Agee's introduction, was first pub-
lished by the Agee-Hosenball Defence Committee in mid-
1977 in London. The authenticity of the document was con-
firmed by the American Embassy in London to the Sunday
Times in late 1976.)
///
112
Philip Agee and Henry Kissinger
One of the main reasons for the establishment of the Central
Intelligence Agency in the wake of World War II was to central-
ize the national intelligence effort so as to avoid gaps and over-
laps as much as possible. As the President's chief intelligence
officer, the Director of Central Intelligence was supposed to
coordinate the collection and production of all the intelligence
agencies in Washington from the Department of Agriculture's
information service to his own CIA. So much for the theory. In
practice, no DC I was ever able to coordinate the activities of the
entire intelligence community.
According to the final report of the Senate Intelligence Inves-
tigating Committee under Frank Church, each of the Directors
of Central Intelligence failed to coordinate and effectively to
direct the overall intelligence collection and production efforts
because they all lacked sufficient statutory or executive author-
ity to overcome the special provincial interests of the military
and others who controlled intelligence agencies other than the
CIA. The result was, in fact, a system of gaps and overlapping
that was both costly and, at times, dangerous.
When William Colby became DCI in 1973, he installed several
innovations that he hoped would improve his ability to manage
the intelligence community as a whole. For the production of
National Estimates, considered to be the highest level and most
refined of intelligence reports in that they seek to predict both
short- and long-range developments in other countries, Colby
established a system of eleven National Intelligence Officers
(NIOs), each of whom was responsible to the DCI for intelli-
gence collection and production in his geographical or functional
specialty. Colby assigned the NIOs to coordinate the drafting of
National Intelligence Estimates among the various agencies of
the intelligence community. The NIOs also played an important
role in the functioning of another of Colby's innovations, the
system known as Key Intelligence Questions (KIQs).
Director Colby's new intelligence management system con-
sisted of a limited number of Key Intelligence Questions that, in
theory, would fulfill the most important intelligence needs of
national policy makers. Acting for the DCI, who issued the
KIQs, the National Intelligence Officers were assigned to coor-
dinate the allocating of resources toward answering the KIQs
with representatives from the various collection and production
agencies outside the CIA.
For fiscal year 1975 there were a total of 69 KIQs, approxi-
What Uncle Sam Wants to Know About You: The K.I.Q.s
113
mately one-third of which dealt with Soviet foreign policy moti-
vations and military technology. Others dealt with international
terrorism and negotiating positions of the different sides in the
Arab-Israeli conflict.
Although the report of the Senate Intelligence Investigating
Committee revealed that the KIQ system was not notably more
successful in achieving reallocation of resources toward priority
issues, the questions in themselves are important because they
deal with major information needs.
In June 1976 I received from an anonymous sender a State
Department document dated 3 December 1974 which contained
the CIA's Key Intelligence Questions on economic, financial,
and commercial reporting requirements for fiscal year 1975, to-
gether with a substantial discussion of each. According to the
document, these KIQs had been ratified by the National Secur-
ity Council Intelligence Committee, chaired by Secretary of
State Kissinger. In all, eight economic topics are covered by
these KIQs which consist of KIQs No. 56 through 63 of the total
of 69 for fiscal year 1975.
On my first reading of the document I was convinced of its
authenticity because of the format (I had read hundreds of such
Department of State Airgrams while I was in the CIA) and be-
cause of the government jargon contained in the text. I wanted
to be extremely cautious, however, in order to avoid falling for
an embarrassing provocation (in case the document were apoc-
ryphal and had been sent to me by the CIA), so I took no action
to publish the document until, quite surprisingly, the U.S. Em-
bassy in London confirmed the authenticity of the document I
had received anonymously. During the first week of November
1976, my friend and journalist colleague, Mr. Steve Weissman,
called at the American Embassy to ask for an interview with the
new CIA Chief of Station, Dr. Edward Proctor, whose presence
in Britain Mr. Weissman had just discovered. He told the em-
bassy press officer that he wanted to speak to Mr. Proctor about,
among other things, the CIA's economic, financial, and commer-
cial intelligence reporting requirements contained in the State
Department KIQ document, a copy of which I had given to Mr.
Weissman, who was writing an article for the Sunday Times.
In an apparent attempt to discredit Mr. Weissman, an officer
of the Embassy telephoned the Sunday Times, warned that a
fake document on the KIQs had been circulating in Europe, and
finally agreed to allow a Sunday Times reporter to review both
/ 14 Philip Agee and Henry Kissinger
CONFIDENTIAL
the faked document and the original. Mr. Derek Humphry, the
Sunday Times reporter, read both documents in the Embassy
and took notes from the sections of the faked document that had
been added by the forger to emphasize that the KIQs were de-
signed to support subversion and economic warfare by the Un-
ited States against friends. In fact, there was no need to make
the original true document any worse. Mr. Humphry confirmed
that the text of the document I had received anonymously was
the same as the text of the original true document signed by
Secretary of State Kissinger and shown to Mr. Humphry in the
U.S. Embassy along with the forgery.
On reviewing these intelligence collection requirements, one
must keep in mind that although officers of the Department of
State are ordered in this document to seek answers to the ques-
tions through their normal open sources, diplomatic conversa-
tions, and other overt means, the CIA is required to fulfill the
very same information needs through spies and other means of
espionage. The National Security Agency has the same report-
ing requirements which it attempts to satisfy through operations
to monitor and analyze both government and private communi-
cations all over the world.
While not the most gripping document in the world to read,
the KIQs clearly show the role of the American intelligence
community in support of American companies. Two of the KIQs
ask specifically for information on the economic performance of
the major non-Communist industrial nations (naming the United
Kingdom and others by name), and on the positions these coun-
tries are likely to take in coming international trade and financial
negotiations. Concerning financial negotiations with the Interna-
tional Monetary Fund, the KIQs ask for information on the
objectives of "priority countries" (West Germany, Japan,
France, the United Kingdom, and others), and timely reporting
on "prepared negotiation strategies including initial proposals
and fall-back positions." Information on foreign competition for
American companies' exports is, as would be expected, of spe-
cial interest. Two other KIQs request information on the foreign
assets like bank and investment accounts of the major oil ex-
porting countries, particularly the Arabs, on the vulnerabilities
of these countries to competitive energy resources, and on the
prospects for converting their oil exports into imports of military
hardware.
Other KIQs relate to production of raw materials and various
primary products, other countries' stockpiling and marketing
What Uncle Sam Wants to Know About You: The K.I.Q.s I IS
CONFIDENTIAL
policies, and to trade balances and political stability in the major
LDCs (Less Developed Countries like Brazil, Mexico, and In-
dia). Still another KIQ asks for information on production and
demand for food and other commodities such as cotton, while in
another KIQ the requirements are for data that will help Ameri-
can companies compete more effectively for foreign contracts to
build nuclear power plants and pipelines and to sell aircraft.
The following note accompanied the document:
Dear Sir:
With this letter I am sending you a document that will
be of interest to you. You will understand that the
sensitivity of this matter makes it impossible for me to
meet you for the time being. Please use this material in
any way you wish. I hope I will be able to send you
more before too long. The work that you and others
like you are doing is very inspiring. 1 wish you
success.
An admirer
AIRGRAM
Classification:
CONFIDENTIAL
Message reference
A-8450
TO: ALL AMERICAN DIPLOMATIC AND CON-
SULAR POSTS AND USOECD PARIS. USEC
BRUSSELS, USNATO BRUSSELS, US MIS-
SION GENEVA, USIAEA VIENNA, USUNIDO
VIENNA
FROM: Department of State Date: 3 December 1974
GDS
ECRP XX
FY 1975 Coordinated Statement of Priority Economic,
Financial, and Commercial Intelligence Requirements
Worldwide of the Washington Economic Community
Department of State Airgram A-2251, 14 March 1973
The referenced Airgram, the first in this series, commenced
with a statement that remains valid:
The Executive Branch's priority needs for economic
intelligence on foreign countries are determined by im-
portant US interests and the strategies adopted to pro-
116 Philip Agee and Henry Kissinger
CONFIDENTIAL
tect or advance them. These interests and strategies
have a new importance resulting from the changed
place of the US economy in the world. US economic
intelligence needs center around the motivations and
assessments of other countries in the economic field.
In particular, reporting is requested on how host-coun-
try domestic and international economic policies and
programs are likely to support or conflict significantly
with US policies and programs. The past is of interest
to the extent that it illuminates these essential ingredi-
ents of US economic policy formulation.
In the intervening period, since March 1973, detailed guidance
has been supplied triannually to eight regions of the world by the
Economic Alert Lists (EALs). (The annual Economic Reporting
Guides, after a poll of representative embassies, have been abol-
ished.) The EALs are prepared by the US Intelligence Board's
Economic Intelligence Committee and include inputs from the
entire Department as executive agent of the Combined Eco-
nomic Reporting Program (CERP). The current update of the
over-all statement (now on a fiscal year basis) places in context
specific guidance provided subsequently by the Economic Alert
Lists and is intended for all officers charged with responsibility
bearing directly or indirectly on the broad economic/financial/
commercial area.
The general priority subjects set forth below are to a varying
degree applicable to all diplomatic and consular posts. They are
the eight economic topics contained in the Key Intelligence
Questions (KIQs) for FY 1975, issued by the Director of Central
Intelligence, and are designed to be responsive to and to support
the following objective for the intelligence community:
"Provide reliable, timely, and comprehensive information and
assessments relevant to US international economic policy deci-
sions and negotiations."
These questions were formulated, it will be noted, in consulta-
tion with senior policy officers of the principal departments and
entities concerned with international economic relations. Subse-
quently, they were ratified by the National Security Council
Intelligence Committee which is chaired by Secretary Kissinger.
The KIQs are identified by number for reference purposes: the
order of their listing should not be regarded as implying any
internal priority. By definition, all Key Intelligence Questions
are of major importance.
What Uncle Sam Wants to Know About You: The K.I. Q.s 117
CONFIDENTIAL
Washington continues to welcome suggestions as to how, to
what extent, and in what manner the US Government efforts at
the post or elsewhere can influence attitudes and positions in a
manner beneficial to US economic objectives.
56. What are the changes in the measures of current
performance and leading indicators of future perform-
ance of the economies of the major non-communist
industrial nations, especially Italy, Japan, Germany,
France, the UK, Canada, Norway and Sweden?
Include these governments' domestic and foreign economic
policy responses to those changes, and the likely effect of these
responses on the future performance of these economies and the
US economy.
The assessment of the current and likely future performance
of the major economies and the effect of foreign economic
events on the US economy is a task that is routinely performed
by the economic intelligence community. The singling out of this
task as a Key Intelligence Question for FY 1975 reflects the
uncertainties inherent in the world-wide adjustment to the
change in the price of oil. The simultaneous pressures of rapid
inflation, low or negative rates of growth of output, and wors-
ened balances of trade that now impinge on the governments of
most of the major industrial nations could conceivably produce
a series of mutually inconsistent and self-destructive policy de-
cisions that would greatly accelerate existing recessionary
forces and threaten to reverse the trend of world economic inte-
gration and political cooperation.
The types of information on which continuous and timely re-
porting is required, particularly for the priority countries, are:
1. Detailed current measures of economic per-
formance including statistics on the structure and
distribution of national income, international
trade and finance, wages and prices, the govern-
ment-sector budget, tax receipts, domestic mone-
tary and financial variables, employment and un-
employment, excess productive capacity, and
leading indicators of future performance such as
advance export orders, planned capital construc-
tion, and surveys of consumer expectations.
118
CONFIDENTIAL
Philip Agee and Henry Kissinger
2. Official and unofficial forecasts of national in-
come and product, the balance of trade and pay-
ments, wages and prices, and unemployment.
3. The likely content and timing of projected do-
mestic and foreign economic-policy decisions by
government or actions by major economic groups
such as unions or producer associations, and the
sources of uncertainty as to timing or content.
4. Estimates of the effect of current or projected
policy decisions or events on the level, structure,
and distribution of national income, the balance
of trade and payments, wages and prices, and
unemployment.
5. The nature of the economic policymaking
process in government including:
a. The perceptions and objectives of indi-
vidual economic policymakers and the in-
stitutional interest of bureaucratic ele-
ments that play a principal role in
economic policymaking.
b. The current and projected division of
authority or influence over the major
areas of economic policymaking.
c. The determinants of the distribution of
influence over economic policymaking by
individuals, bureaucratic elements, or
outside groups.
d. Shifts in demands of economic pres-
sure groups such as labor unions and op-
position political parties.
57. What are the principal objectives of the major eco-
nomic powers (especially France, West Germany, Ja-
pan, the UK, Italy, Canada and Brazil) in forthcoming
multi-lateral trade (GATT) and financial negotiations
(IMF)?
What Uncle Sam Wants To Know About You: The K.I.Q.s 119
CONFIDENTIAL
Include their possible negotiating tradeoffs and the electoral
and intragovernmental factors that affect these objectives and
tradeoffs. With respect to multilateral trade negotiations, ap-
praise the consequences of alternative trade agreements to the
US foreign trade balances.
Report on potential issues in the trade negotiations that may
affect the availability to the United States of imported supplies
of key commodities; government strategies for developing those
industries, including agriculture, in which the United States has
an export interest, particularly high-technology areas and those
that could make heavy inroads into US domestic markets, such
as shoes and textiles.
Report on indications of intended foreign actions relating to
such international monetary questions as alternative exchange-
rate regimes and margins of fluctuation, the numeraire of the
monetary system, and the roles of Special Drawing Rights, gold,
and reserve currencies; consolidation of reserve currency hold-
ings; balance-of -payments adjustment mechanism, including cri-
teria for adjustment; uses of capital and other balance-of -pay-
ments controls.
Report on efforts by private industry to influence governmen-
tal negotiating positions. Include also efforts to establish new
non-tariff barriers, such as unreasonable product standards or
safety specifications, made by private industry or trade associa-
tions.
For the priority countries especially, but to some extent for all
countries, timely reporting is required on:
1. Prepared negotiation strategies including ini-
tial proposals and fallback positions.
2. Pre-negotiation perceptions of and reactions
to US negotiating strategy.
3. Perceptions of the progress of negotiations
and changes in objectives and bargaining strate-
gies during the course of negotiations.
4. The determining factors in the policymaking
process including:
a. The perceptions and objectives of indi-
viduals and the institutional interests of
120 Philip Agee and Henry Kissinger
CONFIDENTIAL
bureaucratic elements that play a major
role in policymaking.
b. The division of authority or influence
over policymaking between individuals
and bureaucratic elements.
c. The content and relative influence of
major pressure groups such as trade un-
ions and opposition political parties.
58. What are the changes in composition and location
of the foreign assets of the major oil exporting coun-
tries, and what are their policies with respect to chan-
neling funds on longer terms than heretofore through
multilateral institutions, the Eurodollar market, US
financial markets and direct loans or grants to the
LDCs?
Continual, recurrent reporting for the OPEC countries (in par-
ticular, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iran, Iraq, Abu Dhabi, Libya,
Venezuela, Nigeria and Indonesia) is needed on:
1 . Accrued earnings from exports.
2. Payments received for exports or from foreign
investments and the structure of time lags be-
tween accruals of earnings and receipt of pay-
ments for oil exports.
3. Current imports of goods and services and in-
formation relevant to estimation of future import
levels.
4. Payments for imports and changes in the lags
between time of import and time of import
payment.
5. The composition of direct investments made
by these countries.
6. Loan or grant commitments to foreign govern-
ments or multilateral institutions and the timing
of disbursement against these loans or grants.
What Uncle Sam Wants to Know About You: The K.I.Q.s 121
CONFIDENTIAL
7. The composition by location, denominated
currency, and maturity of financial asset portfo-
lios held by official or quasi-official institutions
and current changes in the composition of these
portfolios.
8. Policies governing choice of location, denomi-
nated currency, and maturity of future purchases
of financial assets by official or quasi-official
institutions.
9. Policies with respect to further direct loans or
grants to governments or multilateral organiza-
tions.
10. Indications of intentions to make large abrupt
changes in the composition of financial portfolios
(in particular, shifts to or from assets denomi-
nated in dollars).
59. What are the policies, negotiating positions and
vulnerabilities of the major petroleum exporters with
respect to the production and marketing of oil, and
how are these policies affected by the prospects for
development of non-OPEC energy sources ?
Continuous and detailed reporting is needed on:
1. Current and forecasted production, export,
and productive capacity of primary energy by
type (oil, gas, coal, and elements of the nuclear
fuel cycle) in both the OPEC countries and those
non-OPEC countries that are major producers of
primary energy.
2. Current and estimated future consumption of
primary energy by type for those countries that
are major consumers of energy.
3. The policies, plans, and negotiating strategies
concerning production, price, and export of oil
and gas of individual governments and associated
institutions such as OPEC and OAPEC.
122 Philip Agee and Henry Kissinger
CONFIDENTIAL
4. Policies of the major energy-consuming coun-
tries that affect their levels of imports and con-
sumption of energy.
5. Bilateral arrangements between the OPEC
countries and major energy-consuming countries
concerning the supply and financing of exports of
oil and gas.
6. Information relevant to estimates of the future
reserve and balance-of -payments position (in par-
ticular, plans concerning major investment pro-
jects and imports of military items) of each
OPEC country and those countries such as Can-
ada, Mexico, and Norway that might have poten-
tial to increase world energy supplies.
7. Perceptions of key policymakers and signifi-
cant political and bureaucratic elements of each
OPEC nation concerning:
a. The oil marketing policies of their own
nations and other OPEC nations.
b. The reaction of the US and other gov-
ernments of major oil-consuming nations
to these policies.
c. The vulnerability of these policies to
actions by the oil-consuming nations and
other OPEC nations.
8. The production, marketing, and investment
policies of the major US and foreign oil compa-
nies and the status of negotiations between the
companies and host governments.
60. What changes in production, control and pricing
policies are the major producers of important raw ma-
terials or primary products, including Canada and
Australia, considering either individually or in con-
cert?
What Uncle Sam Wants to Know About You: TheK.I.Q.s 123
CONFIDENTIAL
Report on steps being considered or taken by either govern-
ment or the private sector in other countries to limit or regulate
the quantity, price or state of processing of raw materials nor-
mally exported — particularly steps affecting US access to such
materials, government attitudes toward and strategies for multi-
lateral cooperation among exporters or between producers, ex-
porters and importers in efforts to stabilize the market either
when such commodities are in globally short supply or when
they are trending toward oversupply.
In particular, detailed and timely collection and reporting is
needed on:
1 . Current statistics on and forecasts of produc-
tions, exports, inventories, productive capacity,
prices, and consumption of important raw materi-
als and primary products for most countries.
2. Inventory and stockpiling policies of produc-
ing and consuming nations and international price
support organizations.
3. Plans of producing governments to play a
larger role in controlling or influencing produc-
tion and price by unilateral or, especially, collec-
tive action.
4. Actual or planned shifts, whether or not stim-
ulated by government policies, of emphasis vary-
ing from exporting basic raw materials to proc-
essing domestic raw materials and exporting
them in a processed or further refined or fabri-
cated form.
61. How have changes in the relative prices of imports
and exports (petroleum, fertilizer and grain in particu-
lar) affected the food supply, foreign trade and pros-
pects for economic growth and political stability of the
major LDCs (especially India, Pakistan, Brazil,
Egypt, Mexico, South Korea, Argentina, Uruguay and
Chile)?
Report on attempts of the LDCs to attract foreign capital to
ease balance-of -payments problems; government attitudes to-
ward use of grants, loans, or concessionary purchase arrange-
124 Philip Agee and Henry Kissinger
CONFIDENTIAL
merits to lessen the pressure of high import prices on their econ-
omies; measures taken or contemplated to reduce consumption
of high cost imports or to develop export industries and new
export markets.
In particular, detailed and timely reporting is needed on:
1. Current economic performance and popula-
tion growth.
2. Estimated production and consumption of
food-stuffs; estimated production and utilization
of agricultural inputs.
3. The sources and potential magnitude of error
in current official economic statistics.
4. Projected foreign-exchange earnings on cur-
rent account.
5. Projected availability of net capital imports
(concessional and commercial).
6. The composition of imports for alternative im-
port levels; estimates of the effect of changes in
the level of imports on growth prospects.
7. Estimates of the effect of government policy
decisions on the net availability of foreign ex-
change, food import requirements, distribution of
income, productivity of investment, and future
population growth.
62. What is the likely demand (especially by the USSR,
China, India, Japan, Indonesia, Bangladesh) for im-
ports of wheat, soybeans, rice, corn, and cotton, and
what are the capabilities of countries other than the
U.S. (especially Canada, Argentina, Australia, Brazil
and Thailand) for supplying these commodities to the
world market?
Report on changes in government policies that affect agricul-
tural productivity ; investments in the agricultural sector or in the
infrastructure serving agriculture; changes in reserve stocks re-
quirements; problems encountered in planting, harvesting, or
transporting agricultural products; developments in foreign de-
What Uncle Sam Wants to Know About You: The K.I.Q.s 125
CONFIDENTIAL
mand for or supply of raw materials or foodstuffs, especially
grain, that may indicate possible world shortages such that ex-
ternal demand for US products could lead to shortages in the
United States.
Also, detailed and timely reporting is needed on:
1. Current information on crop prospects in each
of the main importing and exporting nations (in-
cluding the EC as a group).
2. Current information on importer and exporter
stock levels (and, for the USSR, the condition of
stocks), and importer and exporter views of their
consumption and stock requirements.
3. Current information on trade and expected
trade in these commodities.
4. Information on future production plans to in-
clude changes in cropping patterns and invest-
ment.
5. Prospects for the modernization of agricul-
tural production techniques ('The Green Revolu-
tion').
63. What actions arc being taken or planned by foreign
governments or private groups that could so substan-
tially affect the ability of American business to com-
pete for foreign sales as to involve the US interest in an
important way?
Examples are sales of aircraft, nuclear power plants, enriched
uranium and major construction programs such as the Suez
pipeline.
Report on government anti-inflation or anti-recession actions
that serve to stimulate exports or protect home industries, in-
cluding the setting of export prices that do not fully reflect the
domestic price level, preferential credit arrangements, tax in-
centives, export development programs, adjustments assistance
programs, administrative barriers to imports, regulations influ-
encing the import or export of industrial technology, trade
agreements involving trade restraints or safeguards, and at-
tempts to negotiate large contracts.
Also report on government measures affecting operations of
126 Philip Agee and Henry Kissinger
CONFIDENTIAL
US subsidiaries abroad or restricting US equity ownership or
sectors of operations; intentions of governments to nationalize
or expropriate US-owned property; changes in general eco-
nomic, tax, tariff, and subsidy policies that impede or stimulate
foreign direct investment; official and private attitudes toward
US investments; and requirements for US subsidiaries overseas
to reinvest profits within the foreign country.
KISSINGER
CLEARANCES:
TARIFF: G. ECKLUND
INT: B. BURNS
AID: J. HOATH
TREAS: L. ELSBERND
COMM: M. RENNERT
CIEP: J. DUNN
STR: G. FEKETEKUTY
EXIM: S. POLLACK
LAB: B. WHITE
AGRI: W. GASSER
DOT: P. BRONEZ
OMB: A. DONAHUE
CEA: J. KVASNICKA
ARMY: LT. C. K. MONTGOMERY
NAVY: CAPT. G. WALKER
AF: J. D. PAFENBERG
DIA: H. FORBES
NSA: S. BURN
AEC: M. EISENSTEIN
OPIC: P. DICKERSON
ACDA: R. PAJAK
FRB: R. BRYANT
STATE: G. GOLDSTEIN
(INR)
The CIA's
Corporate Shell Game
by John Marks
Jeffrey A. Manley has his name on the door at Burwell, Hansen
and Manley, but he is not allowed to use his own firm's Xerox
machine. The problem, according to Manley, is that he doesn't
have a government security clearance and the copier is located
in a room full of classified documents. Manley, a mustachioed
young Harvard law graduate, observes that a closed-circuit tel-
evision system scans the law firm's reception room in downtown
Washington and that the monitor is located in a part of the office
he has never entered.
These extraordinary precautions at Burwell, Hansen and
Manley exist because the firm shares office space with Southern
Capital and Management Corporation and Southern Capital is
what is known in the intelligence trade as a "proprietary." It is,
in other words, a wholly owned and operated subsidiary of the
CIA.
[This article first appeared in the Washington Post on July
II, 1976]
127
128
John Marks
So far as is known, Southern Capital is the CIA's largest
remaining proprietary. Its work in managing the CIA's $30 mil-
lion investment portfolio is so secret that the Agency persuaded
the Senate Intelligence Committee not to press for the compa-
ny's actual name, instead calling it "The Insurance Complex."
For more than two decades, the CIA has made extensive use
of proprietaries like Southern Capital to hide operations under
the mantle of private enterprise. In order to incorporate and run
this "business" empire, the Agency has relied on lawyers.
Washington is a city of lawyers. Therefore, it is hardly surpris-
ing that the local bar brims with lawyers who perform secret
services for the agency's overlapping, interlocking network of
front companies. The trail of lawyers leads from Southern Capi-
tal to more than 15 recently discovered proprietaries in the
Washington area alone. Some have been disbanded; others, like
Southern Capital, are still active.
"Insurance Complex"
Southern Capital, our starting point, takes the CIA straight to
Wall Street. It is the investment arm of an assortment of proprie-
tary financial companies, located mainly in foreign tax havens
such as the Bahamas, Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, and Pan-
ama. Southern Capital was created in 1962 as a front insurance
company to provide coverage for agents and equipment in-
volved in covert operations — particularly those connected to
CIA-owned airlines. "The Insurance Complex" then branched
out into other entrepreneurial ventures. It received money from
CIA insurance premiums, from deductions taken from secret
agents' pay and — at least once in the past 10 years, according to
a CIA budget specialist — from funds left over from the Agen-
cy's congressional appropriation.
By the late 1960s, Southern Capital had on hand between $25
and $30 million, which it invested in a mix of stocks, bonds, and
other securities — both foreign and domestic. During the early
years, according to a former employee, investment decisions
were made largely by the brokerage firm of Scudder, Stevens
and Clark. (There is no evidence that the brokerage firm knew of
the CIA tie.) But in either 1969 or 1970, an internal CIA study
concluded that the Agency would receive higher profits if CIA
experts decided what to buy and sell. A special CIA board of
directors chaired by then General Counsel Lawrence Houston
took over the selection of securities for Southern Capital.
The CIA 's Corporate Shell Game
129
On this committee — which was called the MH MUTUAL
group — sat the CIA's chief of budgeting, the director of finance,
and the head of the office of economic research. This last mem-
ber was particularly important, according to an inside CIA
source, because he enabled Southern Capital to "draw on the
advice of the (CIA's) economic research people. Any stock-
broker would like 300 trained experts giving advice. If it was not
a conflict of interest, it at least should have been offered to the
public."
The proprietary's best earner was Eurodollar deposits made
through the Morgan Guaranty Bank's Brussels office with a re-
turn of 13% at one point, a former employee recalls. After the
MUTUAL committee took over, Southern Capital branched out
from its normal blue-chip purchases to more speculative fields,
including short-term buys of Swiss francs and several hundred
thousand dollars in Mexican pesos. Another source reports that
during the early 1970s, when the CIA was working secretly with
ITT to keep Salvador Allende from power in Chile, Southern
Capital owned some ITT stock. MUTUAL Chairman Houston
told the Senate committee: "Well, a couple of times our invest-
ment advisor recommended a stock which I knew we had big
contracts with, and I told the board no, this involves a conflict of
interest. We won't touch it."
The net profit on Southern Capital's portfolio in 1974 was
more than $1.5 million, according to the Senate report. Most of
that money never found its way onto Southern's balance sheets,
however, because it legally belonged to proprietary insurance
and financial companies in overseas tax havens. Southern Capi-
tal, as a Delaware corporation doing business in the District of
Columbia, did submit U.S. tax returns but was under no obliga-
tion to list the money it made for its sister proprietaries. The
company kept three or four lawyers busy full time, a former
Southern employee recalls. "Mr. Evans was a stickler on legal-
ity," he says.
"Mr. Evans" is Marvin L. Evans, who ran Southern Capital
for the CIA until his retirement in 1973. Evans extends the pro-
prietary trail to Africa, among other places, and his stewardship
illustrates how difficult it becomes to sort out the private inter-
ests of the proprietary managers from the "official" interests of
the CIA. According to a former associate of Burwell, Hansen
and Manley, Evans not only managed the CIA's portfolio but
also ran an in-house investment club for people working in the
office.
130
John Marks
One of Evans' private law clients, a Miami man named
Thomas R. Green, runs a string of air companies in Florida,
Africa, and the Caribbean. Africair, Green's holding company,
is apparently not an outright proprietary, but it has done consid-
erable business for the CIA. Marvin Evans now owns 15% of
Green's Africair; Green served on the board of directors of
Southern Capital.
One of Africair's largest subsidiaries is Pan African Airlines,
based in Lagos, Nigeria. According to CAB records, this com-
pany makes 80% of its revenues from a single U.S. government
contract for air service to remote outposts in West Africa. The
CIA is a major participant in that contract, according to a State
Department official who puts its value for the year at $575,000.
Informed CIA sources report that Pan African was set up in 1962
in close cooperation with the Agency and is considered inside
the CIA to be a covert ' 'asset. ' '
In 1975, Africair sought CAB approval to merge with South-
east Airlines, which flies in Florida and the Caribbean. In that
filing, Africair noted its companies were making profits from
their African operations at rates "more than adequate to cover"
the losses it expected from Southeast. Africair received CAB
approval, and thus profits received in large part from unpubli-
cized CIA business were used to subsidize air service in Florida.
Neither Green nor Evans would return a reporter's repeated
phone calls requesting information about the various intertwined
relationships. Evans' phone was disconnected the day after the
first attempt was made to contact him. Even a direct appeal to
Africair's Washington lawyer, James Bastian (also the long-time
attorney for the CIA's best known proprietary, Air America),
asking him to seek a response from Evans and Green produced
no reply.
Airline Connection
The Pan African Airlines setup is not isolated. The CIA has
used its proprietaries to establish influence over many of the
world's airlines, especially in the Third World. To see how this
is done, it is necessary only to follow men connected to South-
ern Capital. Two of its directors have also served on the board
of a related proprietary known as United Business Associates.
During the mid-1960s, UBA had offices at 818 18th Street N.W.
— with at least two other CIA fronts on the same floor.
A former UBA officer recalls that one of the company's big-
The CIA 's Corporate Shell Game
131
gest operations was a deal to finance a national airline for Libya,
then a kingdom. "Our interest was to lend money for the pur-
pose of controlling the airline," he says. "It was to offset the
Communists f rom moving in."
The money — reportedly several million dollars — was to come
from other CIA proprietaries, according to the ex-officer, and
UBA had a plan to win over the Libyan government. "The way
we set it up was like this: We had to offer them control over 20%
of the stock of the corporation and we would lend them the
money. Then we would have to put one of their natives along-
side every American in a similar position. Talking about kick-
backs, that's the name of the trade over there. That's how we
covered the men of the cabinet . . . And if we ever called that
note, they would have taken the franchise away."
UBA did not win the franchise, but neither did TWA which
was in at least indirect competition with the Agency's UBA,
having prepared a feasibility study.
Why this great intelligence interest in airlines? Orvis Nelson,
an aviation veteran who worked with the CIA to set up Iran Air
in the early 1950s, explains: "If I were sitting in a position where
I was curious about what was going on in troubled areas, there
are two things I would be damned well interested in. The first is
information. The second is transportation to get in and out, to
get any information and, perhaps, to do some other air activities.
You have mobility. You know who and what are going in and
out. You know who people's associates are. You are in a posi-
tion to move your people about. "
Orvis Nelson, now 69 and still going strong, has set up 16
airlines in his time and has run his own supplemental carrier.
Sometimes he has cooperated with the CIA — but he vehemently
states he has never been under the Agency's control. He won't
state which of his airline deals involved the CIA. He does say,
however, that U.S. government involvement in foreign airlines
is as great as ever.
Some of America's commercial airlines have worked closely
with the CIA in the past. A retired CIA operative with 20 years
of field experience recalls, "When we wanted something from
Pan Am, we went right to Juan Trippe" (the corporation's ex-
chief). In Panama, the former operative says, the Agency had a
deal with Pan Am in the mid-1950s under which CIA men could
rummage through baggage during transit stops. The airline even
provided them with mechanics' overalls.
United Business Associates had other ways of getting infor-
John Marks
mation from foreign countries and planting agents in key places.
An ex-employee remembers: "We were running companies all
over the world as a management concern. We would hire and
place a manager into a company, and he would then report back
to us as far as the financial records were concerned. In turn, we
would report back to the investor." The investor was the CIA.
Similarly, in recent years the CIA has set up management
consultant firms in the international energy field. An executive at
one of Wall Street's most important investment banks confirms
that certain consultant firms with ties to U.S. intelligence win
governmental and private contracts in the Middle East as man-
agement experts and use these positions to gather secret eco-
nomic intelligence. The investment banker reports that this data
is then passed on, at least in part, to American companies in a
position to profit from it.
From the CIA's point of view, of course, the principal value
of the proprietaries' penetration of international business comes
from the knowledge and consequent leverage flowing back to the
Agency. It has gathered voluminous information on both Ameri-
cans and foreigners — information which is preserved in orange
cardboard folders, known as "201 files." According to a source
familiar with the CIA's economic records, the 201 file on inter-
national stock manipulator Robert Vesco alone is more than six
inches thick.
Embarrassing Moves
The managers and employees of CIA proprietaries are an ex-
tremely mobile group of people, moving frequently among com-
panies and government agencies. Their activities must be ac-
complished secretly, without revealing CIA connections, and
this requirement sometimes puts other government agencies in
compromised positions.
For example, in 1973 a Thai national- named Puttaporn
Khramkhruan was arrested on charges of smuggling some 59
pounds of opium into the United States. The U.S. attorney's
office in Chicago was forced to drop the case because the Thai
was a CIA agent and the Agency was unwilling to supply data in
court about his background and activities. Former CIA Director
William Colby told an inquiring congressional committee last
year: "It was quite easy to see that his activity for us would be
revealed in the course of the trial. We requested the Justice
The CIA 's Corporate Shell Game
133
Department not to try him for this reason. They agreed."
One matter that would have presumably been revealed at a
trial was that Puttaporn was carrying out his supposedly anti-
drug intelligence work under the cover of a handicraft business
set up for him by Joseph Z. Taylor and Associates. That firm
was another CIA proprietary, whose corporate secretary once
worked for United Business Associates.
The Taylor firm's work as a CIA front compromised another
government entity, the Agency for International Development.
Then-AID Director John Hannah had announced in 1970 that
AID provided no cover to the CIA anywhere in the world out-
side of Laos. In fact, with the apparent knowledge of Hannah,
the CIA's Taylor and Associates was then in the midst of a
seven-year, million-dollar effort to train Thailand's border pol-
ice, under the cover of an AID contract. In 1974, Joseph Taylor
himself received a high State Department appointment from
President Nixon.
The CIA's protective arrangements for its proprietaries ex-
tend far beyond the Justice Department or AID to other federal
agencies. The CIA has stopped audits — or started them — at the
IRS. It has interceded successfully at the highest levels of Trea-
sury, Commerce, the CAB, the FAA, and even the Park Police.
It has also been able to influence Air Force issuance of lucrative
Military Air Transport contracts.
Lawyers who have had ties with CIA proprietaries have also
represented well-known figures in politically charged cases. Be-
fore Jeffrey Manley's arrival, the covering Burwell firm was
known as Burwell, Hansen and McCandless. Robert McCand-
less resigned as a partner in 1973 in order to serve as co-counsel
to John Dean in the Watergate proceedings. Jeb Magruder, an-
other key witness against Nixon aides in Watergate trials, had a
lawyer, James Bierbower, who had served as vice president of
Southern Air Transport, one of the CIA's largest air proprietar-
ies. To complete the circle, Bierbower worked out of the same
office in the mid-1960s as Southern Capital's Marvin Evans, and
Evans later shared space with McCandless' firm.
(McCandless, when queried by a reporter, claimed he had not
known of the CIA involvement with his firm. Bierbower refused
comment, saying he could not talk about clients.)
"The lawyers lend an aura of legitimacy and protection in the
proprietary world," an ex-CIA staff attorney notes. And it fol-
lows that the most prestigious lawyers afford the most legiti-
134
John Marks
macy. The CIA has obtained the services of top-flight lawyers,
as the path from Southern Capital shows. Two of the firm's
officers have been lawyers in the Washington law firm of Purcell
and Nelson. Four lawyers in Purcell and Nelson have served as
directors or officers of CIA companies in at least seven
instances.
Three lawyers at another prestigious Washington firm, Le-
boeuf , Lamb and Leiby, were officers during the sixties of an-
other proprietary, Foreign Air Transport Development, which
was organized, according to D.C. corporate records, for "in-
vesting in foreign air carriers." Two lawyers at another down-
town law firm, John Mason and Gerald Malia, served as lawyers
and officers for several CIA companies. The list goes on.
The Agency apparently wanted proprietary boards that read
like membership lists in the American establishment. The boards
of CIA proprietaries, such as Radio Free Europe, included in the
sixties well-known names from the worlds of commerce, fi-
nance, and the media, among them: Richard Mellon Scaife of
the Pittsburgh banking family, General Motors chairman James
Roche, publisher John Hay Whitney, ex-United Fruit president
Thomas D. Cabot, CBS president Frank Stanton, and socialite
Winston Guest. There were retired generals such as Lucius Clay
and officers of such companies as American Airlines, Interconti-
nental Hotels, Bell Helicopters, and Virginia Gentleman distil-
leries. Southern Capital's two presidents have been the late
Henry Koch, who was director of financing for the World
Bank's International Finance Corporation, and Leigh Cramer, a
retired vice president of the First National City Bank.
"You're dealing with your conservative element in the higher
price bracket, for the most part," a retired CIA man noted.
"Even so, you've got to run Agency security checks on them to
make sure they're not supporting every radical cause on the
street."
On occasion, these security investigations, which are carried
out without the knowledge of the person concerned, can have
unexpected consequences. An attorney whose firm set up pro-
prietaries for the CIA during the 1960s recalls that Agency
sleuths turned up information that the firm's receptionist was a
madam running a string of call girls. "The fact that our recep-
tionist had a lot of phone calls was not unusual," the lawyer
says, "but we were told she was a weak link and we ought to get
rid of her."
The CIA's Corporate Shell Game
135
Taciturn Crew
Most of the roughly 40 lawyers and outside directors con-
tacted for this article did not want to talk about their involve-
ment with the CIA — or about anything else for that matter. One
lied about his CIA connection, but later admitted it. The lawyers
tended to cite the attorney-client privilege as reason for their
silence, even when they also had served as corporate officers. A
few of the lawyers made impassioned pleas for anonymity, argu-
ing that revelations of CIA work would do damage to their
careers.
In view of this vulnerability, why did so many lawyers flock to
the CIA's service? One former CIA official says the lawyers are
drawn to proprietary work because they enjoy "a sense of in-
trigue that a lawyer doesn't get drafting a will." A knowledgea-
ble lawyer cites a more practical reason that might have applied
to some. "Working for the CIA can be important in the way you
impress clients. It allows you to say, 'I'm in here tight on impor-
tant national security matters.' "
The late Howard Hughes, whose companies held huge CIA
contracts, apparently believed that CIA ties helped business.
According to testimony of his former lieutenant, Robert Maheu,
Hughes felt that "if he ever became involved in any problem
with the government, it would be beneficial for him to be in a
position of being a front."
Money is a practical motivation for those lawyers who are
paid according to their normal fees schedule. The most often
cited reason for cooperation with the CIA, however, was patri-
otism. Arlington lawyer L. Lee Bean explains his own involve-
ment thus: "I had polio and I happened to be 4-F. I tried to get
into the war in a crazy way. Then I was told by a dear friend of
mine that, if I would work with the Agency, it was a way to help
my country. It was the patriotic thing to do, I thought. I still do.
. . . Regardless of what's happened to the CIA, on the whole it's
done a good job."
The CIA has never had trouble getting the "front people" it
wants. Retired General Counsel Lawrence Houston told a re-
porter that he had approached hundreds and hundreds of law-
yers over the years and only met one who turned him down —
and that man refused because the CIA wouldn't pay him
enough. According to CIA sources, there is still no scarcity of
eminent new recruits.
136
John Marks
Willing Recruits
None of this means that there was a huge conspiracy at the
heart of the U.S. government or that lawyers or prominent es-
tablishment figures knew about illegal CIA activities — just that
hundreds, if not thousands, of prominent outsiders were willing
to work with the CIA. Within this context, the CIA was able to
assemble a farflung commercial empire that feeds off its own
earnings as well as government funds. Proprietary revenues
from outside the CIA averaged over $30 million per year, ac-
cording to the Senate report. That is money earned independ-
ently of Congress and not reflected in the CIA budget — which is
secret anyhow.
Now, according to the Senate committee report, the large CIA
airlines have been sold off, and Southern Capital is the last siza-
ble profitable front. The Senate report does not state, however,
that the CIA has unloaded the air proprietaries to companies and
individuals with which it has long been closely connected and
that the Agency will almost certainly be able to make continued
use of these world-wide assets.
Moreover, there is room for doubt about whether the Senate
committee got even a close approximation of Southern Capital's
operations or intertwined connections. According to two
sources familiar with the committee's work, the staff conducted
virtually no independent investigation, relying almost exclu-
sively on records volunteered by the Agency. As one of the
sources states with real bitterness, "Listen, the proprietary sec-
tion of the report was done in the last month or two, and it was
based on whatever the CIA told them. . . . The Agency wouldn't
let them see, for example, the basic files on the air
proprietaries."
As for Southern Capital, the Senate committee did find that
"serious questions remain as to the propriety of using such a
mechanism to provide insurance and retirement benefits for
Agency employees." Nevertheless, the committee recom-
mended that the company's investment programs be permitted
to continue with some restrictions — which the CIA had already
imposed on itself. Southern Capital will no longer buy stock in
American companies, and it reportedly will not be used in sup-
port of operational activities.
The CIA refused, however, to answer a reporter's written
questions on why the money currently invested by the CIA front
The CIA 's Corporate Shell Game
137
cannot be put into non-controversial government bonds or why
its payments cannot be made through regular Agency channels
instead of through corporate cover.
The CIA has clearly not given up on Southern Capital. As the
Senate report notes, the Agency has plans to establish within the
Southern Capital complex several new corporate "shells" which
can be "adapted to various new CIA missions."
The Washington Lawyers
Plush Washington law offices may seem far removed from the
grisly and often illegal world of covert operations, but the CIA's
proprietary companies can provide a connection. Take the expe-
rience of an Arlington law firm.
In the early 1960s, its senior partner, L. Lee Bean, was con-
tacted by an old friend from his University of Virginia days
named Robert G. Harper. Harper worked out of offices on 17th
Street NW shared by the firm of Purcell and Nelson, and he
secured the aid of Bean's firm in setting up two CIA
proprietaries.
One was called Zenith Technical Enterprises, and until 1966 it
provided cover to the CIA's entire Miami station, which was the
Agency's biggest installation anywhere outside of Washington.
Zenith Technical was one of over 50 proprietaries the CIA main-
tained in Florida alone for Cuban operations. From behind Ze-
nith's cover, the CIA waged a secret war against Castro, featur-
ing sabotage, crop destruction, and numerous assassination
attempts.
The other proprietary set up by Bean's firm became Anderson
Security Consultants, Inc., located first in Arlington and then in
a low modem building in Springfield. Anderson's ostensible
function was to provide security services to private industry,
banks, and schools, but in fact its main job was to serve as the
hidden operational arm in the Washington area of the CIA's
Office of Security. The Senate Intelligence Committee deals
with Anderson Security in its report, but calls it only "the Secur-
ity Project."
Starting in 1967, Anderson Security tried to gather informa-
tion and infiltrate Washington-area peace and civil rights groups
— in order, the Agency later claimed, to provide advance warn-
ing of demonstrations that might threaten CIA buildings. Within
the Agency, this domestic surveillance program was code-
138
John Marks
named "MERRIMAC." A few months after it began, CIA
agents operating under it were instructed to collect information
on who was contributing money to the targeted groups — a far
cry from protecting buildings.
The Rockefeller Commission found that these MERRIMAC
activities "exceeded the CIA's statutory authority."
Another Arlington lawyer, who helped Bean set up both An-
derson Security and Zenith Technical, explains his current feel-
ings: "As I look at it now, I see the potential evils, but where do
you draw the line? How do you deal with Communists? You
have to look at the framework of what things were like then."
Asked if he felt misused after creating companies involved in
attempted assassination and illegal domestic spying, the lawyer
replied, "Yes, very definitely. They traded on my patriotism.
My loyalty to my country has been used improperly — all under
the guise of 'we can't tell you anything because of the secrecy,
but believe us, it's all for the good. We're the good guys; we're
trying to help and you can help us.' I fell for it. I never dreamed
that our little tiny action would end up this way . . . We do this as
lawyers every day, never knowing what will be done with the
legal entities we set up."
What They Do:
Western Europe
Introduction
Although the Welch killing and the Agency's manipulation of it
slowed Congress' "determination" to investigate Agency
abuses and the American media's efforts to expose them, the
backlash had little effect in Europe. Most European analysts and
journalists were unhindered by any myths about the sanctity or
the decency of the American intelligence community. Indeed,
commercial media openly competed among themselves and with
the left-wing papers to see who could name the most CIA
people.
The articles which follow demonstrate the breadth of the in-
vestigations in nearly every country in Western Europe. This
selection is by no means complete. Rest assured that the cam-
paign is in full swing.
139
The CIA in
Post-Franco Spain
by Cambio 16 (Research team:
Eduardo Chamorro, Galo
Freixet, Consuelo Alvarez de
Toledo, Nicole Szulc, and
Steve Weissman)
From the top floors of the American Embassy in Madrid, behind
the tightly locked doors of the so-called Office of Political Liai-
son, the CIA chief in Madrid, Robert Gahagen, and his clandes-
tine action team closely watch the dynamic of Spanish political
life in the era begun with the death of Francisco Franco. What
are they saying about the conflicting demands of the left, the
right, and the center? And what are their plans for a country that
is not their own?
After the failure in Southeast Asia and the ongoing storm in
the Middle East, the panorama that Gahagen sees and analyzes
holds a crucial importance for the Americans, who see recent
events in Spain as part of a sequence that, from Turkey to Portu-
gal, could pose a serious threat to their interests.
Faced with this panorama, Gahagen has his problems. At the
moment American diplomats and politicians — especially in Con-
[This article first appeared as "La CIA, Aqui, Ahora," in the
January 12, 1976, issue of Cambio 16, in Madrid, Spain.]
140
The CIA in Post-Franco Spain
141
gress — are feeling particularly tired of their old activism in for-
eign affairs. Vietnam and Watergate have dampened their eager-
ness to intervene, and as one veteran of the diplomatic wars put
it to Cambio 16: "You get tired of prescribing for all the world's
ills, especially when you realize that the medicine you've pre-
scribed doesn't always work. "
Nonetheless, Spain isn't Tibet or even Laos — countries where
the CIA found themselves forced to retreat — and when it comes
to defending their bases, businesses, ideology, and influence,
the Americans are not prepared to step back and run the risk of
the country slipping through their hands. Not where the country
— Spain — has been for many years an objective of the highest
order.
So, the Americans are far from giving up their old interven-
tionist approach, even when it could lead to a new stage in the
Cold War. This was the meaning of Kissinger's public warning
to the Soviets over the lack of cooperation shown by the Por-
tuguese Communists or Angolan MPLA — a warning even more
caustic in the statements of the leaders of the Democratic Party,
who seem even more determined to block any gain by the left in
Western Europe.
As they put it in their own statements on the future of Spain,
the United States favors only "Spain's closer links with the
European groupings." Or, in other words, the American per-
spective sees Spain's entry into NATO and the Common Mar-
ket, as well as — given Europe's attitude toward the Spanish
monarchy — a major opening toward democracy. And so the
United States would be prepared to support King Juan Carlos I,
as they had been doing before the death of Franco.
In this context of weariness, international frustration, a real
necessity to intervene, and restrained support, Gahagen weighs
the range of his decisions. In a non-public, though not secret,
fashion, his team — along with the State Department diplomats —
maintains systematic contacts with a wide range of Spanish poli-
ticians, from the Franco diehards in "the bunker" to leaders of
the Socialist and Christian Democratic opposition. Many of
these people regularly visit the American Embassy in Madrid —
though some prefer to meet elsewhere — and during recent years
these contacts have led to a stream of invitations to well-placed
politicians, independent journalists, and leaders of the moderate
opposition to visit the United States as participants in the Inter-
national Visitors Program. And although the invitations all come
142
Cambio 16
from the Ambassador, Gahagen and his men take part in main-
taining the contacts and selecting the visitors, some of whom
even belong to the Junta Democratica.
Do these contacts with the opposition go beyond a friendly
smile and a trip to the U.S.A.? Most likely they do. Knowingly
or not, the majority of the leaders of the Spanish opposition
have for many years gravitated around groups financed by the
CIA — groups such as the Congress for Cultural Freedom and the
International Commission of Jurists.
At present, according to the New York Times, the CIA has
channeled millions of dollars to Portuguese Socialist and Chris-
tian Democratic groups which have close contacts in Spain.
And, as has become known, part of this passing of funds took
place through channels that the CIA established in the Socialist
parties of Western Europe.
On the same plane, but without any proof, some observers
even speculate on the possibility that the Americans are main-
taining official contacts with Santiago Carrillo and his Commu-
nist Party. A recent article in the influential Foreign Affairs,
which often reflects the foreign policy of the American govern-
ment, suggested that Carrillo wouldn't be so bad, and observed
that "Europe and the U.S., if they are to deal with Spain at all,
will presumably have to adjust to the presence of communists
near the center of power ..."
Equally, widely believed rumors from Washington indicate
that, in return for stability, the CIA is seriously considering the
possibility of taking a new attitude toward the existence of Eu-
rope's more "moderate" Communist parties. If that were the
case, Gahagen and his Liaison Office would be holding secret
meetings with the Spanish CP, hiding from the Spanish
"bunker" and the right wing of the American Congress one of
the more important facets of their liaisons dangereuses.
Reality, however, contrasts sharply with such suppositions.
The Department of State recently vetoed the issuance of a visi-
tor's visa to a well-known leader of the Italian Communist Party,
while the American Embassy in Spain has apparently forbidden
the establishment of contacts with the Spanish Communist Party
(PCE). So American anticommunism clearly continues. And,
paradoxically, while the Americans artificially exaggerate the
Communist threat, they appear to underestimate the PCE's ac-
tual strength and potential influence. In fact, the Americans al-
most seem to believe that a moderately civilized transition gov-
The CIA in Post-Franco Spain
143
eminent would bring with it the disappearance of the left as a
problem. "The United States continues to see no advantage in
dealing with the Communists anywhere in Western Europe," a
well-placed source told Cambio 16. "The policy continues to be
one of keeping Santiago Carrillo as ostracized as possible and
hoping that he remains there permanently."
But what if ostracism doesn't work? What if the aperturistas
and moderate opposition can't contain the political ferment?
What if there were a massive strike wave and the Communists
ended up in some kind of coalition government? What, in the
end, if the worst fears of the "bunker" prove real? The answer,
as everyone knows, would be the intervention of one military
group or another. The military attaches at the American Em-
bassy already appear to have close contacts with Spain's mili-
tary and security services, and the attaches themselves are all
officials of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), the Penta-
gon's intelligence arm, which competes against — and collabo-
rates with— the CIA.
In addition, the United States has ample programs of military
training and cooperation and, according to a well-informed
source, the Americans try to use these programs to get influen-
tial contacts among the Spanish military, and, where possible, to
help these contacts move up the ladder to posts of even greater
influence. At present, however, neither DIA nor CIA seems to
be using their contacts to favor a military solution to Spain's
political problems. Covert action rarely strays too far from overt
policy, and — so far, at least — the policy is to back the moderate
civilians.
Still, should the moderate civilians fail or the apertura go too
far, the Americans know where to look within the military. And
should their military contacts feel little inclined to intervene, the
Americans — and especially the CIA — know exactly how to spur
them on with a good dose of chaos. In Chile, the CIA helped do
it all, from creating a shortage of toilet paper to backing strikes,
terrorism, and provocation. In Spain, they might try something
else. But whatever the "dirty tricks," it's still what Kissinger
calls "destabilization," and on the top floors of the American
Embassy in Madrid, that's still the specialty of the house.
According to some sources, the CIA now view events in Spain
much as the Americans viewed events in postwar Europe. In
this perspective, they would channel aid to Socialist and Chris-
tian Democratic groups as a means of solidifying and strengthen-
144
Cambio 16
ing them against the Communist Party, which is supposed to
have organizational superiority. Such a program would certainly
fit with the State Department forecasts on the future of Spain in
the 1970s, made prior to the death of Franco. Of the three politi-
cal groups considered — Socialists (PSOE), Christian Demo-
crats, and Communists — the State Department saw the PCE
(with an estimated membership of 30,000) as the major focus of
the problem, as much for its ability to organize as for its rela-
tions with the Catholics and the more moderate left.
In this scheme, the PSOE appeared as the country's most
important sector — and the PCE's principal adversary on the left.
But, according to officials in Washington, this confrontation
could be dampened by the attitude of PSOE's younger mem-
bers, for whom the PCE seemed a natural ally. These nuances,
of course, would shape the work of the American intelligence
services, given prospects for a future Socialist Congress.
As for the Christian Democrats, Washington considers them
incapable of filling the role that their older brother in Italy played
during the postwar years. For the American intelligence agen-
cies, the Spanish Christian Democrats lack organization and are
too ideologically diversified — disqualifying them for the role of
containing the Communists. As may be inferred from the state-
ments of sources close to these agencies, this role would be filled
with greater chances of success by other groups such as the
Organization Revolucionarid de Trabajadores and the Union
General de Trabajadores in Madrid and the north of Spain, by
the Union Sindical Obrera in the Basque country, and by the
Oposicion Sindical Obrera in Madrid and Valencia.
Naturally, the fate of each group analyzed by the CIA and
State Department implies the possibility of "covert aid" and its
subsequent utilization. And here the ground becomes slippery,
since in the majority of cases the recipients don't know — and the
American intelligence services don't want them to know — that
they are being supported.
The American intelligence services know their own servants
and they also know the advantages of passing unnoticed: to
appear clearly linked with any of the organizations they actually
help would prove fatal. So, the protests of innocence on the part
of the recipients are often as legitimate as the covert aid of
which they are accused is real.
Still, the American interests in Spain are such that the view
doesn't seem to be blocked by so dense a cloud. In fact, the
The CIA in Post-Franco Spain
145
American secret services could be said to have thrown off their
hats, their trench coats, and their dark glasses, and emerged to
dance under the lights, as seems already to have happened in
Madrid where perhaps the fundamental point is not to play, but
to win. As may be understood from the statements of Kissinger,
the most important thing for American interests in Spain is not
to stop a Communist coup — which would not be tolerated by
certain domestic groups — but to avoid a shift to neutralism in
Spanish foreign policy. This is the real danger for the U.S.A.
Washington's new strategic planning passes right through
Spain, since the Iberian Peninsula is an extension of the African-
Atlantic shelf. The Sahara, Angola, the independence move-
ments in the Azores and Canaries, the Paris-Madrid-Rabat axis
all form part of the same story. And it is no longer a matter of
facing up to the Soviets, but of keeping alive the superpower
muscle, creating focos of activism to block the process of nor-
malization in international relations.
All of which explains the direct American participation in the
question of the Sahara and American support to the "Marcha
Verde," which the Department of State carried out in a fashion
that was as discreet as it was efficient. With the handover of the
Sahara to Morocco, the officers of the American intelligence
services gained the isolation of Algeria, the division of the Third
World, and the security of the monitoring units on Ceuta and
Melilla and the base on Tenerif e — which some people talk about
as if they don't exist, but which the countries of the Third World
already take as fully functioning.
The outcome of the Sahara problem represents the return of
American vigilance to a vital area ignored during the escalation
in Vietnam. Already the Americans have secured the oil route
that passes through Las Palmas and along the coast of Angola
and the monitoring of the Soviet Mediterranean fleet from the
south, thus reinforcing NATO's most vulnerable zone. And all
of this would be put at risk if Spain were to become truly
neutral.
The democratization of Spain can become as genuine as the
neutralism that comes with it — in which case, the American
bases would be evacuated, producing fundamental geopolitical
changes in the area. Faced with this possibility — and in spite of
what might be most convenient for the government in Madrid —
the United States would not be prepared to tolerate a Mediterra-
nean Switzerland.
146
Cambio 16
To stop this neutralism seems to be the most evident objective
of the clandestine activism of the American intelligence services
in Spain, whose work — whatever some theorist of the "bunker"
might think — would not be governed by the hypothetical danger
of a Communist takeover.
CIA Operations in
Greece
by Yiannis Roubatis and
Karen Wynn
Background of the CIA in Greece
Since the end of the Second World War, Greece has been one of
the most important operations centers of the Central Intelligence
Agency. During the decade of the 1960s the Central Intelligence
Agency used Greece as its base for extensive operations di-
rected against countries in the Mediterranean. During the same
period, the American intelligence operations in Greece were
among the most extensive in countries of comparable size, and
were considered by the CIA among the most important in all of
the European continent. During the same decade, the CIA sta-
tion chief in Athens presided over the activities of more than 200
CIA officers and other employees. The CIA conducted its opera-
tions in Greece from at least five specific sites. They were: 1) the
American Embassy in Athens; 2) the Metohikon Tamion Stratou
Building on Panepistimiou Street; 3) the Nea Makri communica-
[This article first appeared in the Athens daily Ta Nea of
February 22, 23. and 24. 1978.)
147
148
Yiannis Roubatis and Karen Wynn
tions base; 4) the Tatoi communications facilities, and 5) the
American Consulate building in Thessaloniki. The facilities used
by the American intelligence agency for the support of its opera-
tions in the sixties, are today among those covered by the De-
fense Cooperation Agreement between the Greek and American
governments. (The DC A was signed in the summer of 1977 in
Athens by representatives of the Karamanlis and Carter admin-
istrations, but has yet to be put in force.)
Interviews with former employees of the CIA and with other
individuals who have followed the activities of American intelli-
gence agencies in the Mediterranean area reveal today that
Greece was the center for intelligence-related operations in such
countries as: Libya, Ethiopia, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Saudi Arabia,
Lebanon, Turkey, Cyprus and Syria. There are no indications
that, as of this writing, these operations and activities are not
still going on.
As far as can be determined from the interviews, these activi-
ties of the Central Intelligence Agency began as early as 1960,
and were probably going on before. On October 1, 1977, the
CIA's senior officer in Athens from 1962 to 1968, John M.
Maury, lecturing at American University in Washington, D.C.,
publicly confirmed that Greece was used as a base of operations
by the Central Intelligence Agency. Maury stated that, ". . .
Greece was a convenient and friendly home base for activities
going on in neighboring areas. ..." Maury, however, attempted
to convey the impression that it was toward the socialist coun-
tries to the north of Greece that most of the operations originat-
ing in Greece were directed. This statement is misleading be-
cause during the period of his tenure, Greece was a base for
activities mostly into Mediterranean rather than eastern bloc
countries.
The CIA station in Athens was established in the late 1940's
by the Greek-American CIA officer Thomas Karamessines, who
later on became the Deputy Director for Plans, the number three
position in the CIA — head of the branch that coordinates all
clandestine services. The unusually extensive staff maintained
by the CIA in Athens coordinated the support groups and the
communications centers servicing the intelligence operations
efforts of the United States in the countries mentioned above,
called "NE" (Near East) Division. Elements of the support
groups belonged to the Technical Services Division or TSD, one
of the five "operations" departments of the CIA station in
CM Operations in Greece
149
Greece. The communications centers were part of the Commu-
nications Department or MENCA, a semi-autonomous group
administered through CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.
Until 1967, the TSD offices were located on the fifth floor of
the Metohikon Tamion Stratou Building. Later on, the offices
were moved to larger quarters on the sixth floor. The Technical
Services Division officers provided specialized back-up for CIA
operations. TSD assistance to other branches of the CIA in-
cluded electronic monitoring devices, various gadgets for sur-
veillance, special weapons for clandestine operations, drugs for
use in such operations, forged documents and other similar ma-
terial. Most of the TSD officers had experience in radio and
electronics; a few were engineers.
Traveling was an important aspect of the life of the TSD staff
in Greece. As the major support group for covert operations in
countries outside of Greece, the TSD officers were kept very
busy. When one of the CIA case officers in one of the countries
mentioned above determined that the operations he supervised
required some form of special device, he would ask the CIA
station in Athens for assistance. The chief of operations in the
Athens station would then dispatch to the CIA station or base
requesting assistance one or more of the TSD experts. (A
"Station 11 is equivalent to an "Embassy 11 ; Thessaloniki is a
"Base, 11 which is equivalent to a "Consulate. 11 ) Such a special-
ist would fly to the area where his services were needed, per-
form the necessary work, and then return to Greece. According
to a former CIA employee, the TSD people did not use State
Department diplomatic passports when they traveled because of
hostile State Department policies. Civilian and military pass-
ports were used. Another of our sources remembered that the
TSD staff "very often would make their own passports. They
were capable of that kind of thing. They could forge documents,
so making fake passports presented no particular problems to
them. 11
The TSD activities involved aggressive operations originating
in Greece and directed against an area, a country, or an individ-
ual outside of Greece. It is unclear if the various Greek govern-
ments of the 1960s were aware of the TSD activities and the
diplomatic risks involved in permitting the CIA to use Greece as
a base for these offensive operations in other countries.
It would be misleading to suggest that the TSD specialists
worked only outside of Greece. On many occasions the exper-
ISO
Yiannis Roubatis and Karen Wynn
tiseof theTSD staff was utilized within the country. For exam-
ple, when in 1966 the CIA Deputy Chief of Station in Greece,
Harris Greene, considered a plan to discredit Andreas Papan-
dreou, it was the TSD specialists who made him aware that they
had the capacity to deliver LSD into Greece and to get it into
Mr. Papandreou's drinking water on some public occasion. Ac-
cording to people who are in a position to know, the whole effort
was abandoned only when medical specialists advised Greene
that there was no way to assure that once ingested by Mr. Pa-
pandreou, the LSD would have the intended results. Other ac-
tivities of the TSD within Greece included the installation of
electronic listening equipment, the bugging of telephone lines,
and routine breaking-and-entering into homes and offices.
Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, who recently figured in hearings in the
American Senate as one of the main actors in the covert CIA
testing of mind-bending drugs on U.S. citizens, was the overall
director of TSD during the period under discussion. He devel-
oped, among other things, highly poisonous substances such as
shell-fish toxin, which was held in secret by lower level CIA
officials in defiance of the U.S.-Soviet ban on biological warfare
materials. Dr. Gottlieb made several trips to Athens during the
1960s.
In addition to the TSD, the Communications division, or
MENCA, was also part of the activities of the CIA in Greece.
With its main headquarters in the basement of the American
Embassy in Athens, MENCA was the largest operation of the
CIA in Greece in terms of personnel. There were — and still are
today — two relay stations. Site A relay station is in Tatoi, Site B
in Nea Makri. MENCA personnel were mainly occupied with
reception and transmission of information from both the CIA
and the Department of State throughout the Middle East. For
example, when a CIA officer in Syria wanted to send a message
to the CIA headquarters in the United States, that message
would be received in the basement of the American Embassy in
Athens. From the Embassy, with the use of one of the two relay
stations, that message would then be transmitted to the United
States. The Nea Makri relay station was shared by the CIA and
the U.S. Navy, while the Tatoi relay station was an exclusive
CIA facility.
CIA Operations in Greece
151
Organization of the CIA
Thomas Karamessines established the first CIA Station in
Athens some time in the late 1940s. From the very beginning, the
Athens station was considered one of the most important CIA
stations in all of Europe because of the strategic importance of
Greece in the Mediterranean. With the passage of time, the sta-
tion grew to become not only one of the most important but also
one of the largest, serving as a staging base for operations in the
Near East. By the middle of the 1960s, no fewer than two
hundred salaried CIA officers and employees worked for the
American intelligence agency on a career basis, not including
those individuals — Greek or non-Greek — who worked for the
Agency on a contract basis.
The CIA Chief of Station at the time (1962-1968), John M.
Maury, had offices in the American Embassy as well as in the
Tamion Building. (A station chief is, as a rule, a seasoned spy-
master who runs operations in the field. To become a station
chief is to reach the top rung of a professional spy's ladder
abroad.) Maury's assistant, the Deputy Chief of Station, also
had offices in both buildings. James M. Potts held that office
from November 21, 1960, to May 24, 1964. Potts was replaced
by Harris C. Greene, who arrived in Athens on May 27, 1964,
and left in early 1969 when he was reassigned to Bern, Switzer-
land. (Potts returned to Athens to become the station chief from
the middle of 1968 to August of 1972.) Both the Chief of Station
and his deputy had diplomatic covers. Maury appeared as "First
Secretary, Political Officer, Special Assistant to the Ambassa-
dor," while his deputy had the cover of "Attache, Political
Officer."
The majority of the CIA case officers had offices in the Tam-
ion Building, near Constitution Square.
The CIA operation in Greece was divided into two parts: the
administrative or "support" personnel and the "operations"
personnel. There were about forty support employees, perform-
ing housekeeping and clerical duties. In a sense, they formed the
CIA bureaucracy in Greece. The rest of the CIA people be-
longed to the operations component, including 125 assigned to
MENCA.
Steve Milton was the Chief of Operations during the period
under discussion, and was replaced at the end of the decade by
Peter Koromilas. Milton was a Greek-American recruited into
152
Yiannis Roubatis and Karen Wynn
the CIA sometime during the end of the 1940s. He was in the
habit of telling people that he was "America's foremost expert
on Greece." There has been some speculation in Washington
that Milton was reassigned to positions outside of Greece after
1970 because of his mistaken evaluation of dictator George Pa-
padopoulos. According to this account, Milton had been the
most important booster of Papadopoulos among the operations
people in the CIA. When Papadopoulos did not perform as ex-
pected, Milton was sent to Saigon and Tehran. Saigon assign-
ments were a demotion for Europe-based operations officers
with no previous Southeast Asian experience at that time.
Milton was in charge of four divisions, each with a specific
operational task. Each of these divisions was headed by a divi-
sion chief responsible to Milton for the activities under his con-
trol. Milton in turn was responsible to the Deputy Chief of Sta-
tion, Harris C. Greene. During the latter part of the decade,
Milton was bypassed by the division chiefs, who would go over
him to the Deputy Chief. In the words of one case officer,
"Milton became somewhat of a joke at this time." (Milton was
once enraged when the guard at the fifth-floor offices in the
Tamion Building did not recognize him and refused him entry.
Milton replaced the guard with a combination lock.)
The four operations divisions under Milton's control were: the
Greek desk, the Soviet Bloc or SB desk, the Technical Services
or TSD, and the Paramilitary branch. The Communications divi-
sion, MENCA, was administered separately but provided opera-
tions support to the other four. TSD and MENCA were engaged
in activities that included support of CIA operations in countries
other than Greece, called collectively NE Division (Near East).
The Greek desk and the Paramilitary branch were engaged in
operations within the country. SB carried on operations within
Greece against Russian and Eastern Bloc country targets.
MENCA was the largest CIA operation in Greece with some
125 employees. TSD had about 15 officers, the Soviet Bloc desk
7 case officers, the Greek desk 12, and the Paramilitary group 1
to 2 case officers. (A "case officer" is a CIA employee trained to
recruit and "handle" people in a position to know information
useful to American intelligence. Such people might include cabi-
net ministers, prominent businessmen, diplomats, chauffeurs,
government employees, people who work closely with sus-
pected Soviet agents, travel agents, reporters, maids or bartend-
ers. In Greece during the 1960s, most agents and contacts were
CIA Operations in Greece
/5.I
Greek, but foreigners were also used. A case officer is responsi-
ble for anywhere from one to twenty or more "assets," depend-
ing on his energy and ambition. Assets are either agents or con-
tacts, plus any purely technical operation a case officer "runs"
— supervises — such as telephone taps and microphones.)
The case officers used the expertise of the TSD officers for the
collection of information through electronic devices. However,
according to individuals who are in a position to know, in the
period between 1965 and 1969, the CIA had arrived at some
agreement with "people in OTE" (the Greek Telephone organi-
zation), so that when a case officer wanted a telephone bug
installed, he would "call a contact number in OTE and the job
would be done." It cannot be confirmed that similar arrange-
ments between the CIA and OTE employees exist today.
CIA case officers routinely assumed that when OTE installed
such a device, KYP (Kentriki Ypiresia Pliroforion or Central
Information Bureau — Greece's equivalent to the FBI and CIA
put together) would be informed. There are indications that
KYP and the CIA had some sort of "gentlemen's agreement" to
share information collected in Greece. However, the CIA sta-
tion chief was convinced that KYP was infiltrated by "Russian"
agents. As a result, when the CIA in Greece wanted to eliminate
what was called "the security problems of KYP," the TSD peo-
ple would install such devices as were needed without informing
KYP. TSD specialists during this period installed electronic
monitoring devices capable of listening in on most of the tele-
phone sets that belonged to higher diplomats and military at-
taches of Eastern Bloc countries. In installing these telephone
bugs, TSD technicians used, when necessary, vehicles painted
to look like OTE trucks.
Most of the CIA officers were assigned to Greece for four
years. As a rule, only the Greek, Paramilitary, and Soviet Bloc
desk case officers spoke fluent Greek. Station Chief John Maury
spoke no Greek at all. Most of them learned Greek at the For-
eign Service Institute in Washington, D.C. FSI, as the institute
is usually called, is a training facility maintained by the U.S.
Department of State, where diplomats, military and CIA officers
take language training and courses introducing them to the his-
tory and politics of the countries to which they are assigned.
CIA assignments usually begin and end in July or August, so that
the children of the CIA officers can attend school without
interruptions.
154
Yiannis Roubatis and Karen Wynn
John Maury, during his speech at American University, in
addition to suggesting that the station's interests pointed only
north to the socialist countries, asserted that during the 1960s,
the interest of the Agency in the political developments within
Greece was minimal. He tried to leave the impression that the
CIA in Greece was mostly a support operation for activities
outside of Greece. But the CIA was very much involved in
activities within Greece. There were more case officers assigned
to the Greek and Paramilitary desks than to the Soviet Bloc
desk. In addition, CIA officers who worked with him in Athens
were very much surprised to learn that Maury described himself
in his speech as a "Soviet Bloc expert.' 1 While in Athens, Maury
had shown very little interest in Soviet Bloc operations but was
more than involved in the work of the Greek desk case officers.
At CIA parties and social events, his deep interest and involve-
ment in Greek politics would surface, usually in the form of
anecdotal put-downs like the one the week after the military
takeover of the country. In a conversation with Maury, Ameri-
can Ambassador Phillips Talbot remarked that the coup was "a
rape of democracy." Maury answered with the following ques-
tion: "How can you rape a whore?"
The Paramilitary Group
Hidden away among the more than 200 Clandestine Services
people of the CIA in Greece was a curiously low-key operation
called the Paramilitary Group. Perhaps no activity of the CIA
could be as clearly linked to the possibility of internal subver-
sion as this group. The existence of such a group was not unique
to Greece. Similar paramilitary groups, directed by CIA officers,
operated in the Sixties throughout Europe. As a rule, CIA offi-
cers avoided as much as they could becoming case officers in
this group: the exposure of an officer to foreign nationals meant
the end of any possibility for advancement within the CIA, and
shunning even by fellow CIA officers.
In Greece, the Paramilitary Group came into existence some-
time in the early 1950s. From 1963 to 1967, a Greek-American
CIA agent with considerable prior military service in the United
States Army was the person who directed the operations of the
group. In 1967, this officer was transferred to Vietnam and a
junior officer took over. The Greek-American CIA officer re-
cruited several groups of Greek citizens for what the CIA called,
CIA Operations in Greece
155
"a nucleus for rallying a citizen army against the threat of a
leftist coup." Each of the several groups was trained and
equipped to act as an autonomous guerrilla unit, capable of mo-
bilizing and carrying on guerrilla warfare with minimal or no
outside direction.
The members of each such group were trained by the CIA in
military procedures. As far as can be determined, most of the
paramilitary groups trained in two camps: one near Volos, and
the second on Mount Olympos. After the initial training ses-
sions, the groups would drill in isolated areas in Pindos and the
mountains near Fiorina. These guerrilla groups were armed with
automatic weapons, as well as small mountain mortars.
The weapons were stored in several places. Most of the mili-
tary supplies were cached in the ground and in caves. Each
member of these paramilitary groups knew where such cached
weaponry was hidden, in order to be able to mobilize himself to
a designated spot, without orders. Constant problems developed
with keeping the project secret. One CIA officer described it as
"a nightmare.' ' "No sooner would a cache be put into the
ground than one of the recruited Greeks would get drunk in a bar
and start blabbing about the weapons," he said, requiring him to
relocate the cache and find a replacement for the offender. In
addition to arms, food and medical supplies would also be
cached.
During the period between 1963 and 1969, the paramilitary
branch of the CIA in Greece was a completely separate opera-
tion. There seems to have been no contact, official or otherwise,
with the Joint United States Military Assistance Group in
Greece (JUSMAGG). At this time, it is not known if there ex-
isted any contact between these paramilitary groups and ele-
ments of the Greek Armed Forces that took part in the 1967
coup d'etat.
According to a former Clandestine Services source still under
the CIA's secrecy oath, the new head of the paramilitary branch
who took over in 1967 had no military experience and had not
previously engaged in paramilitary operations. Soon after, he
approached a CIA supply officer with an unusual request. Neatly
typed out, using U.S. Army catalogue numbers and descrip-
tions, was an order for a full field hospital, including sophisti-
cated equipment for surgical procedures not undertaken in guer-
rilla war situations, to be requisitioned from the U.S. Army
through CIA channels. The hospital supplies included drugs with
156
Yiannis Roubalis and Karen Wynn
fairly short expiration dates of effectiveness, such as penicillin.
Operating tables and other bulky items too large to cache in the
ground were also requested.
The CIA supply officer, a former military man, trained in lo-
gistics, questioned the paramilitary officer on the appropriate-
ness of the order for his task. Rather than contest the evaluation
of the supply officer, the paramilitary branch head indicated that
"he would check the matter out," and never returned. What
makes the whole affair even more peculiar is the timing of the
request. Constantine, the ex-king, had just returned from a visit
to the United States, where he had several meetings with high
American officials including President Johnson. It is conceiva-
ble, though no proof can be found at this time, that the CIA
officer wanted the field hospital for use in the king's coup, which
took place, unsuccessfully, later the same year.
The Paramilitary Group, as far as can be determined, was
never disbanded. In the eyes of senior CIA officials, the groups
under the direction of the paramilitary branch are seen as a long-
term "insurance" for the interests of the United States in>
Greece, to be used to assist or to direct the possible overthrow
of an "unsympathetic" Greek government. "Unsympathetic"
of course to American manipulation.
The American
Factor in Greece:
Old and New
by Philip Agee
[Author's Note: The following article on the CIA's presence
in Greece was commissioned by the Athens newspaper Ta Nea
in March 1976, just a few months after the killing of Richard
Welch. The article included the names and addresses of approxi-
mately 100 of the CIA's staff employees in Athens, gleaned from
a U.S. Mission list of 1974. Shortly after the article was commis-
sioned, however, the editor of Ta Nea received a death threat if
he proceeded with publication. The editor reconsidered his of-
fer. Eventually, the article, with the names, was published in the
Greek political monthly, Anti, in May 1977. Anti's editor, Chris-
tos Papoutsakis, was imprisoned and tortured under the CIA-
supported "Colonels" regime (1967- 1974), and his brother died
in one of the regime's torture chambers. When the article and
names were published, the Greek government tried unsuccess-
fully to buy every copy of that edition of Anti.]
[This article first appeared in the May 1977 issue of Anti, in
Athens.]
157
158
Philip Agee
The Greek people today offer enormous hope to many millions
of the "free" world's population forced to suffer the relentless
repression and increasing injustices inflicted by right-wing
dictatorships.
Indonesians, Brazilians, Koreans, Africans, Chileans, Uru-
guayans, Iranians — people the world over see in Greece the
proof that their own regimes, in most cases installed or sustained
with substantial clandestine intervention by the American CIA,
can also be defeated some day.
Thirty years of intervention by successive American adminis-
trations are finally ending in a stunning series of defeats that
underline the transitory nature of U.S. efforts to prevent peoples
from achieving national liberation and from installing some vari-
ety of socialism. These efforts began in Greece, and here since
1947 practically every conceivable method of "counterinsur-
gency" has been used from military aid and intervention to more
refined psychological campaigns to promote anti-left hysteria, to
escalation of repression by security services, to fabrications,
provocations, and rigged elections, to a military coup justified
by a "Communist plot," to political assassination and mass tor-
ture of political prisoners.
Increasing numbers of Americans, sensitized by the ghastli-
ness of Vietnam and by domestic political scandals, are compre-
hending how the U.S. government, in its foreign policy as well
as in its domestic programs, serves privileged, minority interests
— the interests of owners and managers of multinational compa-
nies, of professionals and politicians who serve them, of the
military establishment and defense contractors. These millions
of alienated Americans are not simply dropouts, apolitical since
withdrawal from Vietnam. Many are continuing to take positive
action to defeat intervention in other parts of the world, and
where intervention is secret (as in most countries) defeat can be
inflicted, at least in part, by exposure. Perhaps nowhere is it
more important than in Greece for Americans to help expose
and defeat the apparatus for clandestine intervention by the
U.S. government.
The CIA's clandestine methodology has been well exposed
during the past two years through several books by former CIA
officers, by official investigations and reports, and by investiga-
tive journalism and leaks to the press. Those in Greece who
study these methods will be better able to identify certain events
as probable results of intervention by the CIA, and perhaps even
The American Factor in Greece: Old and New
159
to anticipate such intervention. But in addition to exposing what
the CIA does, it is equally important to expose who does it, that
is, who the CIA people operating in Greece are, and who their
local collaborators and agents are. Helping to expose the CIA
personnel working in Greece must be a top priority of the "new
American factor," for if the Greek people wish to expel the
CIA, they must know who they are.
There remain, of course, those Americans whose interests
demand intensification of clandestine intervention in Greece.
For these, the "old American factor" must be preserved,
strengthened, and applied more effectively than ever. For these,
the Americans who work to expose the CIA's operations and
personnel are antipatriotic — even those concerned only with
"abuses" and "failures." Indeed the killing of one exposed CIA
operative provided just the issue needed by the Ford Adminis-
tration to ward off any meaningful congressional reforms to limit
a President's capability for clandestine wheeling and dealing.
Nevertheless, so much has been revealed that few people can
now deny that subversion of "free" institutions by the CIA and
its promotion of hypocrisy, corruption and political repression
are in fact the real antipatriotic and antihuman actions by Ameri-
cans in the international order.
We have made an analysis of the personnel assigned to the
U.S. Mission in Greece in order to discover which offices in the
Mission provide cover for the CIA. Although the list of person-
nel was from 1974, and many of those we have identified as CIA
employees will by now have been transferred to other countries,
the analysis is useful because it will assist in discovering the CIA
personnel currently assigned in Greece and also the general size
and scope of the CIA's main offices there. Moreover, by expos-
ing the CIA people working in Greece during the period of the
military dictatorship, their return to Greece later or their contin-
ued presence now will be difficult. The following analysis prob-
ably has current validity, given the custom in the CIA to use the
same cover structures year after year.
No Greek will be surprised to leam that the CIA has a very
large contingent in the huge American diplomatic and military
mission. As many as 130 U.S. -citizen, staff employees of the
CIA appear to be working in the mission which altogether totals
more than 800 people (not including several of the large military
bases such as those in Crete). These CIA employees are under
thin cover in the Embassy (Office of the Special Assistant, Politi-
160
Philip Agee
cat Section, and Administrative Section) and in the Joint U.S.
Military Advisory Group in Greece (JUSM AGG) in the Tamion
Building.
The Special Assistant to the Ambassador and another officer,
John J. Shea, together with two secretary-typists, comprise the
Office of the Special Assistant located on the third floor of the
Embassy next to the Ambassador's office. Shea, who is 51, ap-
pears to have been a bona fide State Department officer from
1950 until 1957 during which he served in Rome and Baghdad
and was given Arabic language training. In late 1957, however,
Shea was assigned to the CIA office in the Political Section of
the U.S. Embassy in Rome where he worked until reassignment
to Washington in 1965. He again served in Europe (Paris, 1968-
1970 and Rome, 1970-1972) but returned to Washington to the
Foreign Service Institute during 1972-1973, probably to study
Greek. He arrived in Athens in June 1973.
The Embassy Political Section, also next to the Ambassador's
office, provides cover for two CIA operations officers. In 1974
these were James D. Baldwin and Daniel K. Webster. Baldwin,
however, was replaced in June 1974 by Robert H. Larson who in
turn was transferred in April 1975 to the CIA office in the Politi-
cal Section of the U.S. Embassy in Nicosia, where he continues
according to available records. Larson's replacement in Athens
appears to have been William S. Lofgren who arrived from Ni-
cosia in January 1975, and he is also assigned to the Political
Section of the Athens Embassy. In fact Larson and Lofgren
appear to have swapped jobs. Webster also left Athens and was
replaced by James W. McWilliams who arrived in June 1975.
Both Lofgren, 39, and McWilliams have had previous assign-
ments of interest. Lofgren served in U.S. Embassies in New
Delhi (1969-1971) and Beirut (1971-1973) before assignment to
Cyprus in 1973. McWilliams served in the U.S. consulates in
Bombay (1969-1972) and Calcutta (1972-1974) before coming to
Athens. These two officers undoubtedly are instructed to use
their cover in the Embassy Political Section in order to meet
Greek political figures and officials of the other diplomatic mis-
sions in Athens — always, of course, for the purpose of assessing
them for recruitment as spies for the CIA.
The rest of the CIA personnel in the Embassy are assigned to
five communications offices, all nominally part of the Embassy
Administrative Section, Area Telecommunications Office, on
the second floor, except for one communications office next to
The American Factor in Greece: Old and New
161
the Office of the Special Assistant (the CIA Chief)- This office,
room 320 of the Embassy, is staffed by five telecommunications
officers and is probably the office in charge of ordinary commu-
nications of the CIA's Athens Station. The other four communi-
cations offices, however, appear to be a radio relay station for
communications between CIA offices in the Near and Middle
East and the CIA's main headquarters communications facility
at Warrenton, Virginia, not far from Washington.
The largest of the offices of the relay station, designated Re-
gional Relay Facility (RRF), has 49 telecommunications officers
assigned to operate the radios and cryptographic machines used
for sending and receiving the large volume of CIA messages
between Headquarters and the other stations to the east. There
is also a logistics section with six persons assigned, and another
office with the embassy designation T/I (meaning unknown)
which has nine people working in it. The 64 people working in
this relay facility are, of course, vital for maintaining the CIA's
communications with other countries and probably have only a
marginal importance to the CIA's Greek operations.
The fifth CIA communications office in the Embassy is also
called an Area Telecommunications Office and it occupies rooms
239 and 253 with IS people assigned. The chief of the entire CIA
communications operation, who was Florend Kindell in 1974, is
in this office which probably also includes the CIA's main file
room and administrative section (finance, logistics, etc.). Frank
Guldseth appears to be the Chief of Administration for the CIA
Station but he departed in mid-1975. His replacement is prob-
ably Alfred C. Moran who arrived in May 1975.
The transmitters and receivers for at least part of this commu-
nications operation are probably in the Embassy where they can
be adequately protected. However, the Area Telecommunica-
tions Office also has a transmission and receiving site in New
Kifissia which is manned by nine technicians, all of whom ap-
pear to be Greek employees who may think they work for the
U.S. Embassy rather than for the CIA. Still another ATO Greek
employee works in Marathon. Altogether then, the CIA has
some 84 employees under Embassy cover in communications
offices with an additional group of ten Greek employees working
at communications facilities outside the Embassy.
The main operational office of the CIA in Athens is in the
Tamion Building under cover of the military assistance mission
known as JUSMAGG. Altogether, JUSMAGG personnel num-
162
Philip Agee
ber about 110 and these are divided bureaucrat ically into a
Headquarters section and Army, Navy, and Air Force sections.
Within the Headquarters section about 40 CIA employees are
working. All are civilians, ostensibly working for the Depart-
ment of Defense. However, the CIA office is physically separate
from the bona fide military assistance mission, having its own
entrance and elevator,
A number of the CIA officers working under JUSMAGG
cover have had interesting previous assignments under cover of
the Department of State and the Agency for International Devel-
opment. Ronald Estes, for example, served under State Depart-
ment cover in the U.S. embassies in Nicosia (1962—1964), Prague
(1965-1967). and Beirut (1970-1973). He was given Czech lan-
guage training before his Prague assignment, and he probably
learned Greek for his previous assignment in Nicosia.
Jerry Ferentinos served under cover as a political officer in the
U.S. Consulate General in Hong Kong (1961—1964) and as an
"executive assistant" in the Embassy in Vientiane (1966-1968).
His service in Laos was during the period of the CIA's "secret
war," using tens of thousands of Meo tribesmen in their doomed
efforts to defeat the national liberation forces.
Thomas Foster was a telecommunications assistant in New
Delhi (1966-1969) while Norman Goldman worked under cover
as an economic and commercial officer in the Consulate General
in Lahore, Pakistan (1968-1971). Ronald Nordeen used the
cover of a "political assistant" in the Embassy in New Delhi
(1962—1964) and became a Vice-Consul when transferred to the
Consulate in Madras (1964-1968).
John Palevich had cover as a "research analyst" for the De-
partment of the Army ( 1958—1961), as a Vice-Consul in Berlin
(1961-1963), Third Secretary in Warsaw (1963-1966), and as an
"economic officer" in Vientiane (1966-1967). Robert Rayle ap-
peared to have been under rather deeper cover during 1 96 1—1 965
when he worked first as a "marketing consultant" and later as a
"researcher." Discovery of Rayle's ostensible employers dur-
ing those years would probably reveal another "private" organi-
zation providing cover for CIA employees. Rayle went on to
work in the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi (1965-1968) under
cover as a "political-economic" officer. Still another of the JUS-
MAGG cover officers is Stephen Winsky who served in Helsinki
(1961-1966) as a Second Secretary and Vice-Consul. Winsky
speaks Greek.
Probably the most dangerous of the JUSMAGG employees
The American Factor in Greece: Old and New
163
who appear to be CIA officers is William Evans. He worked
under cover as a civilian employee of the Department of the
Army during the 1950s, but in 1959 he went to Jakarta with the
Agency for International Development in the notorious Public
Safety Program of assistance to foreign police and security ser-
vices. Evans was transferred from Jakarta to Saigon in 1962, to
Hue during the same year, and back to Saigon in 1965. He was a
"public safety advisor" throughout these assignments within
the deadly "pacification" campaigns in Vietnam. Evans, al-
though formally assigned to JUSMAGG, has his office in the
Embassy with the same number as the Deputy Chief of Mission
(336). This would place him almost next to the Office of the
Special Assistant. He might well be the CIA's Deputy Chief of
Station.
Two other CIA officers under JUSMAGG cover have offices
in the Embassy as well as in the Tamion Building. They are
George Kublik and Louis Pagano, whose embassy office (326)
places them next to the CIA communications office (320) and the
CIA Chief's office (Office of the Special Assistant, room 329).
Kublik and Pagano may be in charge of the flow of secret docu-
ments between the CIA offices in the Embassy and the Tamion
Building.
For many years the CIA has had a base in Thessaloniki which
is subordinate to the main station in Athens. The CIA people
there appear to be a civilian in the Thessaloniki office of the
JUSMAGG organization and an officer under State Department
cover in the Consulate General since January 1975.
Besides the offices already named, which are used for cover
by the CIA, there is another office in the U.S. Mission that
attracts attention. This is called USAFE (for United States Air
Force, Europe) Detachment 6. This office employs 17 persons,
all but two of whom are men, but in spite of being a military
office all of its personnel are civilians. The U.S. Embassy direc-
tory provides telephone numbers for a "commander" and a
"staff duty officer" but without names. This office is also in the
Tamion Building, and while it may be still another CIA cover
office, a strong possibility exists that this is a communications
monitoring unit of the super-secret National Security Agency.
The NSA has the job of monitoring commercial and govern-
mental communications all over the world, partly for military
purposes and partly for economic reasons to assist American
multinational companies against their foreign competitors. Ac-
cording to a former NSA analyst who was assigned to the huge
164
Philip Agee
monitoring facility at Istanbul during the late 1960s, the NSA
monitoring operation in Greece is under CIA control. Greek
government and military communications are monitored not
only to collect information against Greeks, but also to monitor
the military communications security of Greek forces. Accord-
ing to the ex-analyst, the Greek systems for secret communica-
tions are provided by the NSA and thus are easily monitored and
decrypted. Communications of other embassies in Athens are,
of course, also targeted by the NSA unit.
Couldn't the Greek government know that so many CIA peo-
ple are masquerading as Department of State and Pentagon em-
ployees? Wouldn't the CIA still have close relations with KYP
and other Greek services? Certain government cooperation with
the CIA may well exist in spite of the CIA's flagrant support of
the former military dictatorship. Only a few weeks ago a person
with very good connections in Greece told me that on two occa-
sions during 1975, the American Embassy was given 500 blank
carnets by the Greek Foreign Ministry, and that no record ex-
isted in the Foreign Ministry to indicate to whom the carnets,
which reflect the diplomatic status of the bearer, were issued.
This report may not be true, but there can be no doubt that the
CIA will try to conceal most of its employees from the local
government in every foreign country.
The CIA people in Greece right now must surely be continuing
the interventionist policy adopted in the U.S. in 1947 and fol-
lowed without exception ever since. Intelligence information
collection has no purpose except to be used for action, and
covert action in all its varieties is the end of the cycle. As the
Greek people continue to move toward their liberation, the need
for retrogressive influence and action will correspondingly
increase.
People like Shea, Lofgren, Mc Williams, Estes, Ferentinos,
and the rest are planning at this very moment the Aspida plots of
tomorrow, the Pericles and Prometheus Plans of next year, and
the revitalization of Organization X and IDEA for the long run.
They are planning the next round of antilef t hysteria, forging the
documents to "prove" intervention by "foreign ideologies,"
i.e., anti-imperialist, and preparing new special emergency
measures to facilitate repression. People the world over are
watching to see if the CIA will somehow win the next round or
whether Greeks will at last defeat this secret political police and
its local collaborators.
Hello
Hugh Montgomery
by Steve Weissman
When the new CIA chief for Italy — Mr. Hugh Montgomery —
took up his post in the Eternal City in November 1975, he must
have counted himself a lucky man. Rome, for all its crises,
remains one of the plushest posts for Uncle Sam's secret agents,
and the 52-year-old Montgomery could look forward to chalking
up new coups in his long and distinguished CIA career.
But last week the Roman holiday of Mr. Montgomery came to
a screeching halt when critics of the CIA in the American Con-
gress made headlines by leaking to the press one of the world's
least secret secrets — that the Americans were once again giving
covert funds to anti-Communist politicos in Italy. Then, just as
the CIA's lame-duck director William Colby was publicly deny-
ing the payoffs, the supposedly undercover Montgomery re-
ceived an unexpected telephone call at his private residence on
the Aventine Hill.
[This article first appeared as "Ecco La CIA in Italia," in the
January IS, 1976, issue of La Repubblica, in Rome.]
165
166
Steve Weissman
Would Dr. Montgomery be willing to grant an interview?
asked the caller.
"No!" exploded the CIA chief as he slammed down the re-
ceiver. "No, I certainly would not!"
Montgomery's anger at being so quickly exposed reflects the
personal dilemma of America's top crypto-diplomats. After
Vietnam and Watergate, neither Congress nor the press is pre-
pared to permit the CIA to go on operating in the dark. And with
so many people shining light on their activities, the Agency can
no longer protect their covert operations — or even their own
operatives, as was shown by the recent killing of Montgomery's
counterpart in Athens, Mr. Richard Welch.
"The shoe is really on the other foot now," commented for-
mer CIA operations officer Philip Agee. "For years the CIA has
secretly terrorized people all over the world. But now that CIA
people are becoming publicly known, they are the ones who will
have to look both ways every time they cross the street. And the
more time they spend having to worry and watch their step, the
less time they will have to pay off politicians, help the local
police, or run clandestine operations."
Montgomery, as chief, runs his supposedly secret empire —
and recruits his Italian agents and allies — from rooms 257-262 in
the new wing of the American Embassy. Official American and
Italian records list Montgomery and most of the other occupants
of these rooms as "attaches" and "political officers." But given
the carelessness of the CIA in creating fictitious posts to give
their people cover over the years, it has been possible to identify
most of them as CIA simply by knowing how to use publicly
available biographic records from the U.S. State Department,
along with confidential information from within the Embassy
itself.
The list of these CIA "political officers" includes William
Aeon, Mario Cioci, Robert Devereux, and Michael E. Kostiw.
In response to repeated telephone calls, Mr. Montgomery's sec-
retary has also confirmed that Montgomery is in fact the succes-
sor to the previous CIA chief in Rome, Howard E. Stone, who
had earlier been exposed by the American magazine Counter-
Spy.
Apart from these phoney diplomats, the new wing of the
American Embassy also gives cover to a larger, more secret CIA
unit — the so-called United States Army Southern European Pro-
jects Unit. In recent years this unit has numbered as many as 14
Hello Hugh Montgomery
167
— all CIA civilians despite the military name, and the group has
included at least one police advisor with experience in Laos and
Vietnam. According to one of its members — CIA veteran
Charles Gale, Jr. — the chief of the project is Michael C. Sed-
naoui.
Other CIA officials have been identified in the Embassy's tele-
communications office, among the consular staff in Milan and
Rome, and on the Embassy's economic staff. Mr. Christopher
Costanzo, an economic officer whom Philip Agee remembers
personally from the CIA, has denied knowing Agee or working
for the CIA. "Frankly, I'm shocked that there are people trying
to dig into other people's lives," he said.
In all, the CIA is believed to have over 40 people inside the
Embassy, with several others working here under cover of var-
ious military installations and multinational corporations.
Mr. Montgomery, who oversees the entire operation, has
served an earlier tour of duty in Rome from 1965 to 1969, and
has also served in Athens, Moscow, and Paris. On coming to
Rome, his automobile carried diplomatic plates from Vienna. A
Ph.D. from Harvard, Montgomery was at the university at the
same time as the recently slain Richard Welch and Secretary of
State Henry Kissinger.
The CIA in Italy:
An Interview with
Victor Marchetti
by Victor Marchetti and
Panorama
Q: It has been said that the CIA secretly financed some
Italian organizations. What can you say about this?
A: For a certain period of time, i.e., the 1950s, the
CIA spent from $20 to $30 million a year, or maybe more, to
finance its programs in Italy. It supported cultural and youth
organizations; newspapers; labor unions, of proven anti-
Communist leanings, linked with the American AFL-CIO; Cath-
olic groups . . .
Q: Which groups?
A: The only thing I know is that in the 1950s and 60s the
CIA gave economic support to many activities promoted by the
Catholic Church, from orphanages to the missions. Millions of
dollars each year.
[This article first appeared as "Le mani sull'Italia," in the
May 2, 1974, issue of Panorama, in Milan.]
168
The CIA in Italy: An Interview with Victor Marchetti
169
Q: Do you remember to whom the money went?
A: To a great number of bishops and monsignors. One of
them was Cardinal Giovanni Battista Montini. It is possible that
Cardinal Montini did not know where the money was coming
from. He may have thought that it came from friends in the
United States or from the American government.
Q: Why did Cardinal Montini receive that money?
A: Because he was promoting orphanages. The thinking
was that if such institutions were adequately supported, many
young people would be able to live well there and so would not
one day fall into Communist hands.
Q: Did the CIA also finance political parties? Which
ones?
A: CIA policy has always been to finance all parties op-
posed to communism and first of all the Christian Democratic
Party.
Q: Did CIA assistance to anti-Communist organizations
and political parties continue through recent years?
A: In the 1960s, CIA expenditures in Italy went down to
about $10 million a year. According to the plans, they should
have gradually come to an end with the finish of that decade.
The Cold War was over and the Communist threat in Italy
seemed to have diminished. But in 1969 Graham Martin, the
American Ambassador in Rome [he was assigned to Rome from
1969 to 1972; he was the last American ambassador to South
Vietnam], wanted it to start all over again.
Q: What do you mean?
A: Martin wanted to recommence secret assistance, first
of all to the Christian Democrats, but also to some other political
groups.
Q: Is Martin a CIA man?
A: As far as I know, Martin is not a CIA man. But in all
countries CIA activities are supervised by the U.S. Ambassa-
dor. Some ambassadors work in close contact with the CIA;
others dislike the CIA and try to keep away from it.
170
Victor Marchetli and Panorama
Q: How many men are on the CIA payroll in Italy?
A: I do not know exactly. CIA employees, in the strict
sense of the term, must number from 40 to 50. They operate
around the U.S. Embassy and other small bases in the country.
Then there is the network of agents and informants.
Q: So Martin was the type of ambassador who supported
CIA programs?
A: Yes. Martin is a very aggressive and harsh man who
uses all means, including the CIA, to attain his goals. He is one
of those ambassadors who reflect Nixon's tough line of action.
Q: According to the New York Times, there were secret
meetings between Martin and Amintore Fanfani [ a high-ranking
CD official, Secretary-General of the Party since June 1973 and
for a time Premier of Italy] in 1970. During these meetings it is
alleged that there was discussion of possible CIA financing for
Fanfani supporters, about $1 million, in order to contain the
drive from the left in Italian political life. Can you tell us
whether this story is true?
A: I think so. As far as I know, the New York Times
article is very good. It has a lot of valuable information in it.
Q: It has been said that in your book you mention Fan-
fani, and that such passages have been censored. Is this true?
A: My book is primarily historical. But the CIA does not
want to me to talk even about the past. In fact, I cannot talk. I
did not mention Fanfani by name. I talked about political par-
ties. ... In short, if I tell what has been censored in my book, I
disobey an order from a federal court. And if an article would
then be published on it, the CIA would come down here the next
day and bring me to court.
Q: Can you deny that Fanfani is mentioned in your
book?
A: As I said before, I do not remember having mentioned
names. At least I can't remember it right now. Even if I would
remember it, I would not say so, because there is an injunction
against me. ... It is possible that I mentioned him, If so, it
would be in the context of financial help to Italians and the
The CIA in Italy: An Interview with Victor Marchetti
171
Christian Democrats. Graham Martin wanted to resume such
aid. At that time, he wanted to support Fanfani. He was con-
cerned about Fanfani's ability to maintain his position. ... It
must have been something like that. ... I do not mean that
Fanfani is a CIA agent. Martin only wanted to help him stem the
tide and prevent undesirable elements, such as Communists or
left-wing Socialists, from taking over too much power or
influence.
Q: How would the CIA react today if Italy went too far
to the left?
A: The CIA has its emergency plans. . .
Q: Is a coup d'etat similar to the one that brought the
colonels to power in Greece, with the help of the CIA, as it is
said, possible in Italy?
A: Certainly. If Communists and Socialists were to ex-
tend their influence — which I don't think is probable — we can
well imagine that support to Italian colonels would not be
lacking.
Q: What can you say about relationships between the
CIA and the Italian secret service and armed forces?
A: There is considerable collaboration in many spheres
between Italy and the United States. For example, Italian secret
service officers are being trained in the U.S.A. Of this I am sure.
Q: What kind of training?
A: The CIA gives Italian officers — and officers from
many other countries — basic training in espionage and police
activities. They are trained, for example, to confront disorders
and student demonstrations, to prepare dossiers, to make the
best possible use of bank data and tax returns of individual
citizens, etc. In other words, to watch over the population of
their country with the means offered by technology. This is what
I call technofascism and it is already operative in the United
States. . . . This type of activity is a far cry from the legitimate
work of a secret service, namely the gathering of political, eco-
nomic, and military information on one or another foreign
nation.
172
Victor Marchetti and Panorama
Q: Do you think there is some connection between CIA
emergency plans and the training of allied and Italian officers in
the U.S.A.?
A: Yes, but a remote one. . . .
Q: Which does the CIA trust more: the Italian army or
the carabinieri [the national police force]?
A: I think the carabinieri.
Q: You said that if Italian Communists were to . . .
A: I said that if it were thought that Italy might turn
communist, if a new Luigi Longo [famous leader of the Italian
Communist Party after World War II] managed to gather, let us
say, 50% of the votes and would thus be in a position to form a
government — a government that would announce its intention to
nationalize industries and turn over the Naples naval base to the
Soviets — you may be sure that the CIA and the U.S. govern-
ment would do everything to cause a delay. More than that: in
such an event, if the only way to avoid Communist control of
Italy would be to support neofascist forces, there would be no
hesitation in having recourse to the neofascists. That's what
happened in Chile. All means were used to combat Salvador
Allende, from espionage to economic pressure. The military
stepped in for the coup de grace. William Colby, CIA Director,
says that after all it was not so bad: civil war was averted.
Q: Is there any evidence that General Augusto Pinochet,
head of the Chilean military junta, had direct connections with
the CIA?
A: I don't know. I have the impression that the CIA
knew what Pinochet was planning, and that it supported and
encouraged him. . . .
Q: Many in the U.S.A. and elsewhere believe that CIA
activities are meant to shore up democracy where it seems to be
threatened. . . .
A: With that motivation we went to the extent of sup-
porting corrupt dictatorial regimes, such as those in South Viet-
nam and South Korea, to mention only two examples. Yes, we
The CIA in Italy: An Interview with Victor Marchetti
173
wanted to export democracy. We exported fascism instead. De-
mocracy is like religion: it cannot be imposed. It can be spread
only if those who preach it practice it. One day I finally under-
stood these things. That was why I decided to leave the secret
service.
What the CIA
Is Looking for
in France
by Rene Backmann, Franz-
Olivier Giesbert, and Olivier
Todd
Forty-four CIA agents named in a Parisian daily. A new blow to
America's intelligence services. But it won't stop the maneuver-
ing in France between spies of the East and West.
Liberation — the staff-run and privately-printed daily of the
new extreme left — has become famous from Wissembach
(Vosges) to Washington, D.C. "We usually sell around 20,000
copies," explained editor Serge July. "On Tuesday, January 13,
we sold more than 30,000." At the newsstands in the embassy
districts, certain of the more discreet customers even carried off
their copy of Libe under wraps.
The names of 44 CIA agents in Paris, plus the private ad-
dresses of 9 of them, shouted Liberation in issues number 629
and 630. It was, undeniably, a scoop.
Libe's facts are, for the most part, correct. Named for the first
time in France by Le Canard Enchaine', Eugen Burgstaller is
[This article first appeared in the January 1976 issue of Le
Nouvel Observateur, in Paris.]
174
What the CIA Is Looking For in France
175
indeed the CIA Station Chief in our country. At least in the
"developed countries," it is almost an American tradition to let
it be known who the CIA chief is.
Nonetheless, the Liberation pieces do have their faults. Like
an Embassy employee listed as a telecommunications expert,
who — in fact — only stamps passports. Or another, listed as the
CIA's second-in-command, who actually left several months
ago, along with many of his colleagues. For all its precautions,
Liberation also, in some cases, mixes together the chiefs and the
underlings, the penpushers and the analysts.
The Welch Case
The daily writes: "It is easier to spot the chiefs of the CIA
than the 'honorable correspondents' of the Soviet Union. And
that is undoubtedly to the credit of the United States." The
newspaper also claims that it would reveal the names of the
KGB men "if the American Embassy would be kind enough to
furnish them." All a bit naive, since all of Parisian intelligence —
from the big embassies to the small — knows very well that the
Soviets have two "masters of the hunt" now in the capital. For
the KGB, the "resident" is Ivan Petrovitch Kisliak. And, every
bit as important, for the GRU — the intelligence service of the
Soviet Army's high command — Nicolai Evdokimov. In the offi-
cial yearbooks, the two men are listed as "embassy counse-
lors," of the third and sixth rank respectively. But complete
Soviet yearbooks are as hard to find in Paris as in Moscow.
The Liberation affair is troubling for the Americans. It is part,
according to them, of some sort of grand international conspir-
acy, which is — though surely not in the case of Liberation — run
all the way from Moscow.
The first list of CIA agents stationed abroad appeared in Mex-
ico in 1974, giving the names — real or imagined — of agents based
there. In May 1975, some British journalists published a similar
list for their country in Time Out, and on Thursday, January 15,
1976, they added three names to the list, stirring up a quarrel
between The Times and the Washington Post and embarrassing
Harold Wilson in the House of Commons.
At the outset, a liberal American magazine, CounterSpy, had
published a list of the CIA station chiefs in some one hundred
countries — but without giving their private addresses. The jour-
nalists of Liberation made use of CounterSpy 's methods— cross-
776
Rene Backman, Franz-Olivier Giesbert and Olivier Todd
checking diplomatic yearbooks, foreign service codes and clas-
sifications, and the special insurance policies held by CIA
agents. It was quite a job.
In Washington, of course, they are thinking above all about
the publication in the Athens News on November 25, 1975, of
the name and private address of Richard Welch, the CIA chief in
Greece. Welch was killed on December 23, and it seems a case
of cause and effect.
Elsewhere, on January 13, 1976, the Spanish magazine Cam-
bio 16 confined itself to the names of "nine members of the CIA
stationed in Madrid," and other documents of this kind are
going to appear in Italy, and undoubtedly in West Germany and
the Netherlands.
If the anti-CIA operation continues at this rate, says Henry
Kissinger, "the United States will end up without a secret ser-
vice." Equally moved, the State Department spokesman Robert
Funseth declared that all of this could "incite madmen and fa-
natics to attack diplomats." And it is true that the published lists
do not distinguish activists from analysts, or professional killers
from specialists like the one played by Robert Redford in Three
Days of the Condor, who takes apart the texts of speeches,
expense accounts, newspaper articles, and letters — which is the
case with 99% of the CIA agents who work in France.
Victor Marchetti, a former CIA man who was among the first
to write a book denouncing the crimes and blunders of "the
Company," thinks that the CIA is again interested "in Portugal,
Germany, Great Britain, Italy, and France." In France, the CIA
specialists are interested in everything — from civilian industry
to military production, from foreign policy to domestic prob-
lems. They frequent all the key milieux. They watch all the
political parties. At Parisian dinners, people from most of the
parties can be found at their tables. The CIA gleans intelligence
at all levels.
The Balance of Terror
In France, the CIA is certainly not looking to "destabilize"
the regime, and in any case, no one in Paris seems unduly wor-
ried. At the meeting of the Council of Ministers on Wednesday
the 14th, the delicate subject of the list published by Liberation
was not even raised. Neither Michel Poniatowski, the minister in
What the CIA Is Looking For in France
177
charge of the Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire (DST),
nor Yvon Bourges, who oversees the activities of the Service de
Documentation Exterieure et de Contre-Espionage (SDECE),
even mentioned it. "Ponia" fled from journalists; his press sec-
retary was ill — how convenient — and contented himself with is-
suing a statement: "The French secret services have no part in
this information. ... It is clearly established that it originates
from abroad."
With that in mind, in Paris and the provinces the protection of
certain Americans has been assured or reinforced. At the re-
quest of Washington? For the French police, it was only a few
more men and women to protect.
Public opinion and the press are divided, and the division is
not simply between right and left. Some magazines see Libera-
tion's campaign of denunciation as an invitation to murder. For
Le Monde, there is nothing dishonorable in working for a secret
service, which must by definition remain secret. L'Humaniti
waffles around on the issue, and certainly does not side with the
gauchistes. Even on the left, aside from those who applaud Lib-
eration's initiative, others have questions. Is this a fight against
imperialism? Well, since there are two imperialisms, we must
fight them both at the same time. On the other hand, the revela-
tions may expose the unmasked agents to the risk of being
slaughtered, like Richard Welch in Greece, and is that really
revolutionary? And, finally, doesn't the balance of espionage
contribute to the balance of nuclear terror? And if that's the
case, isn't it dangerous to compromise one side or the other?
The Socialist Party wants the National Assembly to hold a
closed meeting to hear from the government on the relationship
between SDECE and CIA. In effect, they are asking that we
Americanize our ways a bit: no other of the world's secret ser-
vices has been looked at as closely by the legislature as has the
CIA, especially in Senator Frank Church's report, which was
published on November 20, 1975. This report reveals that the
CIA's "clandestine services" arranged to get rid of Fidel Castro
in Cuba, Rafael Trujillo in the Dominican Republic, Ngo Dinh
Diem in South Vietnam, and General Rene Schneider in Chile.
But the report concludes that, in the final analysis, the United
States was not directly implicated except in the case of Trujillo.
The Church report, though very critical of CIA interventions in
many Third World countries, still insists on the need for an
J 78 Rene Backman, Franz-Olivier Giesbert and Olivier Todd
intelligence service, above all to monitor the international arms
race, nuclear and other.
The Risks of the Trade
Men of good faith, such as Serge July, figure that secret ser-
vice agents, no matter who, must take on the risks of their trade.
And Serge July clearly defines his aim: "It's psychological, a
matter of shaking the resolve of CIA agents troubled by the
personal repercussions of their action. For the agent himself,
there is no other solution than to ask a change of assignment. ' '
July thinks a lot about the Third World. "France remains a
land of refuge," he argues. "There are Latin American refu-
gees, Palestinians, and African revolutionaries. The CIA
watches them, looking to set them up. . . .There are some
strange SDECE-SAC-CIA encounters." For SAC, Liberation is
getting ahead, and perhaps a bit too quickly, though that remains
to be seen.
SDECE and the CIA are another matter. France and the Un-
ited States are part of the Atlantic Alliance. In the permanent
struggle against the other alliance, the Warsaw Pact, the CIA
and SDECE work together quite naturally, spontaneously, or-
ganically. In espionage and counter-espionage, intelligence and
counter-intelligence, as in other fields, it is sad but true that the
two camps are still confronting one another, and France remains
one of the fields of battle.
In our country, almost all of the men in charge of the CIA
have diplomatic cover. This is not the case with certain of the
top people of the KGB and GRU. In France, the Americans and
the Soviets have roughly the same number of diplomats. For
SDECE, every Soviet diplomat is a potential agent, but they do
not assume the same about the Americans. The French services
also pay infinitely more attention to the rare Russian terrorists
and students than to the many Americans — apart from Jane
Fonda. They very closely watch, for example, the flying and
non-flying personnel of Aeroflot.
SDECE and the CIA trade all their useful tips on the arrival
and departure of suspects. Some of this information passes
through the DST. As a general rule, though, all of the embassies
— be they Israeli or Arab — are warned "if there's something in
the wind." Diplomacy, as well as national defense, demands this
courtesy.
What the CIA Is Looking For in France
179
And then there's the painful problem of the diplomat-agents
who go too far. Many of their departures go unannounced.
Many agents of the Eastern Countries leave at the first frown to
avoid the scandal of expulsion. They are not expelled officially
and with all the distress that would then be so visible. Like when
a Soviet air attache put a gyroscope and an element from a
Thompson laser into his coat pocket at an aeronautics exhibition
in 1973 — not every Soviet agent is a Kim Philby. Or like when
some Cubans were evidently too clearly implicated in the saga of
Carlos, who killed two French police officers in 1975. That's
beyond the rules of the game. The DST spot and keep a close
eye on the French who work for the KGB and CIA. In principle,
the DST does not work with the CIA, and at a certain point it
should work against them. But in the world of intelligence agen-
cies, there's a lot of swapping around. Unlike their CIA counter-
parts, however, DST officials don't have the means to drop in
for a drink at the Crillon bar.
Suspicious Contacts
The vast majority of espionage crimes and offenses come out
of the blue. For the little peccadilloes, then, the golden rule is
that it's better to keep aneyeona known agent than to have to
build up a dossier on his totally unknown replacement. Certain
French generals, retired or not, might think and say that our
national defense ought to be all-encompassing — as much against
the West as against the East. This surely isn't the view of the
secret services. Nontheless, during the summer of 1975, 1 1 CIA
agents were — not expelled, Alliance oblige — but invited by the
French government to leave. It seems that these gentlemen had
involved themselves in the affairs of a third country.
Despite a few smudges of this kind, the relationship between
SDECE and the CIA seems more flexible and harmonious under
Valery Giscard d'Estaing than under Charles de Gaulle. The
General, doubting the loyalty and effectiveness of the official
services in the struggle against the OAS [Secret Army Organiza-
tion], asked Roger Frey, Jacques Foccart, and other old faith-
fuls from the Resistance network to recruit some "depend-
ables." This implied, among other things, men who would keep
their distance from the Americans.
In 1960, some of the key station chiefs of French intelligence
were summoned to Paris, where they were informed of the new
180
Rene Backman, Franz-Olivier Giesbert and Olivier Todd
diplomatic orientation — no more allegiance to the United States,
though on the small everyday matters some rapport would be
maintained. In this period, surveillance against agents from the
Socialist countries was reduced. The European and American
"stations" were reinforced, both in size and in quality. And
there wasn't even any hesitation in asking a SDECE "plumber"
to install a microphone in the hotel room of Under-Secretary of
State George Ball, who was engaged in friendly negotiations
with the French government.
In Paris, the DST — that is to say, counter-espionage — in-
stalled wiretaps on the telephones of the American Embassy in
order to detect suspicious contacts (which would have included
those of the CIA), and to monitor two diplomats — Larry Gour-
lay and Charles Lester, who were in charge of the CIA's liaison
with the DST and SDECE. According to Victor Marchetti, the
relationship was so bad during this period that the CIA nearly
broke relations with SDECE.
There were also some rather big waves: the SDECE station
chief in Washington since 1951, Philippe Thyraud de Vosjoli,
was ordered to obey the new rules and give information on the
United States. He refused, and in 1963 handed his resignation
directly to President de Gaulle. It was said at the time in the
Elysee, that "Vosjoli has been turned by the CIA." And they
never forgave him, among other things, for spreading a rumor of
high treason — that a close collaborator of the chief of state had
been a Soviet agent. This was the time of the angry boulevard
Mortier, the headquarters of SDECE.
Prime Minister Georges Pompidou took a lot less interest in
intelligence matters than had his predecessor, Michel Debre\
and ideologically, he moved away more easily from the strict
Gaullist orthodoxy. Still, the relationship between SDECE and
the CIA became strained again on October 29, 1965, when
Mehdi Ben Barka was kidnapped from right in front of the
drugstore on Saint-Germain. It was said, but never proved, that
the CIA was involved, and de Gaulle wanted as little talk about it
as possible from SDECE.
"Dynamic Filing"
When Colonel Count Alexandre de Marenches became chief
of SDECE, relations with the CIA got better. Good-natured but
energetic, and as much in favor under Valery Giscard d'Estaing
What the CIA Is Looking For in France
181
as under Georges Pompidou, Alexandre de Marenches took
some drastic steps. He chopped 800 agents from SDECE, nearly
half its strength. This included those considered too pro-Israeli;
those who were sympathetic to Thyraud de Vosjoli and did not
accept the political shift; and also those used up or compromised
in shady affairs, or unfit for "recycling." On one axis, it was
purged for morality; on the other, for politics.
Marenches figured that it was necessary to modernize "the
fish pond." They weren't going to take lessons from the British,
with whom SDECE never had a good understanding, especially
in Africa. There was also no question of seeking advice from the
other side of the Rhine, where, for one thing, they took their
lessons from Washington. Might as well go directly, then, since
the Americans — less numerous than the Soviets, but at the time
more effective — wanted nothing more than to make us welcome.
The fashion was computers, a weak point of the Soviets — and
therefore of the KGB and GRU. The grand opening— SDECE
hired an elephantine UNIVAC 9400 computer, and went as far
as recruiting operators from among the service's soldiers. It was
just as in the United States.
How do the Americans find their brains? They send their
headhunters to the universities. In France, the hunt began in the
elite schools. In the United States, many universities had
worked for the CIA, at times without knowing. In France, con-
tracts were even made with various scientific research groups.
The American secret services also taught the French how to
do "content analysis." Today, for example, the Americans and
the French study the differences between the speeches of
Khrushchev and Brezhnev with respect to their complaints
against different countries. The Americans in Paris, besides the
personal contacts they might have, also study "frequencies" —
how many times are the words "workers," "dictatorship of the
proletariat," and "workers' control" (autogestion) repeated in
speeches of left-wing leaders. And so links with the CIA were
progressively tightened, especially after M. Sauvagnargues, in
Ottawa in June 1974, showed himself to be infinitely more polite
and understanding than M. Jobert. Intelligence, it seems, fol-
lows politics.
Shortly after the Ottawa meeting, some SDECE technicians
went for training to the CIA's home base in Langley, Virginia,
where they were introduced to the "dynamic filing" of intelli-
gence records. In the autumn, two SDECE representatives,
182
Rene Backman, Franz-Olivier Giesbert and Olivier Todd
General Lacaze and Colonel Lionnet, accompanied by the then-
assistant director of DST, Guy Xoual, went to the Hotel West-
bury in Brussels to take part in a seminar on Eastern Europe
organized by the Danish Colonel Erik Foumais, chief of NA-
TO's intelligence, and with the CIA represented by James An-
gleton. Then, last summer, Alexandre de Marenches made a
study tour of the United States, visited the CIA, and brought
home a reform project for SDECE that was in part inspired by
the American organization.
According to Victor Marchetti, these renewed ties between
the CIA and SDECE "remain surprisingly good today." This is
shown in their close collaboration in southern Africa, where the
French and American services stand shoulder to shoulder, tak-
ing turns delivering arms and instructors to the FNLA and UN-
IT A in Angola, while the GRU do the same for the MPLA. At
airports in Zaire and South Africa, American C-l 30s and French
Transalls unload their cargoes of ammunition and light armored
cars side by side. In Paris, DST agents protect General Spinola
when he visits Eugen Burgstaller at his home. It is generally the
official travel service which assures the safety of foreign
personalities.
Who's Who in the KGB
Given this climate of international cooperation, just what is
the CIA now lookingfor in France? "To start with, they wantto
stop the left from coming to power, and wants even more to
stop Communist participation in the government," says Philip
Agee, a former CIA agent who, like Marchetti, has written a
journal of his years in the CIA. "For the CIA this is evidently
the priority of priorities, as it is in all the countries of the Atlan-
tic alliance. Then, Paris is a sort of a crossroads for the Third
World. You have many Arabs and Africans here — in the embas-
sies, the universities, and the international organizations. These
are just the people the CIA is looking to recruit to become agents
when they return to their own countries. At the beginning of the
'60s, one of my friends, Anthony Smith, was sent to one of your
universities to establish relations in this way. Finally, you have a
lot of exiles here — Chileans, Spaniards, Moroccans, and Irani-
ans. The CIA tries to penetrate their milieux. I remember that in
Montevideo we had ourfeelersout among the Brazilian exiles."
What the CIA Is Looking For in France
183
The CIA has ties to all the secret services of the Western
world. They recruit agents among them, and it isn't rare for
western intelligence agents to put the interests of the CIA before
those of their own national agencies.
"As for industrial espionage, the CIA doesn't hold back,"
Philip Agee goes on. "I believe that in France the CIA is very
interested in French industry's technical innovations as regards
the metro." Interviewed the day after Liberation published its
list, Agee figured that it was "at least 95% correct."
For certain diplomats and military experts in the West, "there
is a kind of trial of strength between the KGB and the CIA. In
France, as elsewhere, the Soviets are looking to dismantle the
American intelligence networks in order to hasten the break-
down of capitalism. American liberals and French gauchistes,
scandalized by certain of the CIA's crimes and interventions,
are voluntarily or involuntarily collaborating in this struggle."
But surely no one is going as far as to claim that magazines like
CounterSpy or newspapers like Liberation are in the pay of the
KGB.
Faced with publication of lists of their members — real or im-
agined — the CIA is not responding by publishing an international
"Who's Who" of the KGB or GRU— no doubt to keep the game
from becoming even more complicated. And it doesn't seem that
Henry Kissinger will raise the subject in the course of his com-
ing trip to Moscow; between the SALT talks and Angola, the
agenda is sufficiently charged. But, who knows?
West Germany:
An Interview
with Philip Agee
by Philip Agee and
Informations Dienst
Philip Agee was a CIA agent in various countries for 12 years.
As it became clear to him what this work really meant, he left
the secret service and published his experiences, in order to give
a picture of the work and methods of the CIA to those who are
affected by them. In the last issue of ID we published some of
his experiences in Latin America, typical activities of the CIA.
In /D93 we published his warning about CIA counterrevolution-
ary activities in Portugal. To go with our publication of names of
CIA agents in West Germany, we interviewed him about the
specific situation in Germany.
ID: Philip, where exactly does the CIA operate in Germany?
PA: First I shall warn you that my knowledge in this area is
limited to informal conversations over the years, since I never
worked directly on German affairs. But, given the enormous
|This article first appeared in the January 31. 1976. issue of
Informations Dienst, in Frankfurt. Federal Republic of Ger-
many.]
184
West Germany: An Interview With Philip Agee
185
presence of the United States in Germany, the CIA has a num-
ber of different covers to work behind. A large proportion of the
officers are under cover as Embassy staff in Bonn. Very many,
probably the majority, work under military cover. The biggest
CIA base in West Germany may be one of the Army bases in and
around Frankfurt. There are also CIA units in Berlin and
Munich.
ID: What exactly do these units do?
PA: Those units which work under military cover will be
doing investigative work all over the country. They are highly
qualified technicians who tap telephones, open mail, keep peo-
ple under surveillance, and encode and decode intelligence
transmissions. Usually they work very closely together with the
local security organizations. Other units are charged with special
responsibilities for making contact with organizations and peo-
ple within the political establishment. AH information collected
is used to infiltrate and manipulate these organizations. In Bonn,
in particular, the CIA will try to get at the Chinese, Cuban, and
East European embassies, to check on their mail and visitors,
and if possible to recruit their staff.
ID: The U.S.A. and the CIA have been active in Germany for
many years. What would you estimate have been the political
consequences of CIA activities here?
PA: Since World War II, the aim of U.S. foreign policy has
been to guarantee the coherence of the western world under the
leadership of the U.S.A. CIA activities are directed toward
achieving this goal. They first had to establish or revive various
anti-Communist, pro-American institutions. Left opposition
movements had to be discredited and destroyed. Activity on all
levels was directed to this end. For example, the anti-Commu-
nist trade unions were used, and they received massive CIA
support. National and international organizations with Commu-
nists in their membership were isolated; or attempts were made
to exclude opposition elements. Where this did not succeed,
they founded new, strictly anti-Communist organizations in the
same fields. The International Confederation of Free Trade Un-
ions, for example, took on this function in the 1950s. In such
cases, only a small circle of people are informed of such CIA
infiltration because if it were widely known, this would destroy
the desired image of genuine, nongovernmental, liberal institu-
tions, which the CIA's front organizations must always appear
to be.
ID: What are the specific aspects of the CIA's work in West
186
Philip Agee and Information Dienst
Germany at the moment? In particular, who has been and who
will be supported?
PA: After World War II, West Germany was a crucial area. In
order to secure U.S. interests there, the CIA supported not only
the CDU (Christian Democratic Union), but also the SPD (So-
cial Democratic Party) and the trade unions. The CIA wanted
the influence of the two major political parties to be strong
enough to shut out and hold down any left opposition. Postwar
Germany was one of the most important operational areas for
far-reaching CIA programs, designed to create an internal struc-
ture for the Federal Republic which would be pro- American and
anti-Communist, and to secure commercial interests. And, fur-
ther, the CIA always wants to be in a position to find out what
the Soviet Union is doing.
ID: Is it the case that today the CIA tries to act against the
New Left?
PA: Oh, there isn't any doubt about that. In particular, it will
be worried about opposition groups among soldiers in the West
German Army, and it will try to work against them.
ID: What form does cooperation between the CIA and the
West German secret service take?
PA: As I mentioned before, as regards phone-tapping, mail
opening, and surveillance of people, the CIA works very closely
with the local security authorities. As a rule, cooperation be-
tween the CIA and the security authorities of another country
includes operations carried out by the local service itself, on the
suggestion of the CIA. And often they protect CIA activities
from any legal consequences. But, particularly in Germany,
there are difficulties. The CIA does not trust the German secret
services very much because there are a lot of East German and
Soviet agents in them. And that is not the least reason for the
high number of CIA agents in Germany, because they also have
to keep an eye on the German secret services.
ID: It is now known that the CIA used the English news
agency Reuters to push specific propaganda stories into well-
known newspapers. How does this system work?
PA: Most CIA stations pay journalists to publish the CIA's
propaganda as if it were the journalist's own work. They pass on
faked and true news as authentic news to agencies and important
newspapers. This works in the following way. A CIA unit gives
a fictitious or suitably dressed-up report by cable to the local
CIA officer who is responsible for propaganda. He writes a story
West Germany: An Interview With Philip Agee
187
from it, and gives it to the CIA's contact journalist. The journal-
ist places the story in his paper. Once the story is published
somewhere, other CIA propaganda agents pick it up and, citing
the newspaper as a source, and as authority for the story, try to
get it published in other papers all over the world. At the time of
the Allende government in Chile, in particular, thousands of
slanderous and distorted stories were published inside and out-
side Chile. When I was working in Montevideo as a CIA case
officer, we had a highly-placed journalist who gave CIA stories
to other journalists. They all had contacts with him, and they
were responsible for getting the stories published. Since I pub-
lished my experiences in the CIA, I have been a target myself
for such false stories. About every six weeks, there appears
somewhere or other a curious report which is intended to dis-
credit me. A Los Angeles Times correspondent recently filed a
report in which he asserted that I had given the name of a Polish
Army officer who was a western spy to the KGB. The story is
complete fiction, but its function is clear.
ID: Have the numerous details published recently about the
CIA changed anything?
PA: As long as U.S. policy itself does not change, we can only
hinder its application by fighting against the instruments of that
policy. That's why it is important to publish the names and
addresses of CIA agents — once they are known, they have to
leave. And thus the power and the ability of the CIA to install a
new Pinochet is limited. And that is exactly the reason for doing
it — certainly not in order to get anybody shot.
How CIA Money
Took the Teeth Out
of British Socialism
by Richard Fletcher
Since World War II the American government and its espionage
branch, the Central Intelligence Agency, have worked systemat-
ically to ensure that the Socialist parties of the free world toe a
line compatible with American interests. CIA money can be
traced flowing through the Congress for Cultural Freedom to
such magazines as Encounter which have given Labour politi-
cians like Anthony Crosland, Denis Healey, and the late Hugh
Gaitskell a platform for their campaigns to move the Labour
Party away from nationalization and CND-style pacifism. Flows
of personnel link this Labour Party pressure group with the
unlikely figure of Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands, who has
for 20 years sponsored the mysterious activities of the anti-
Communist Bilderberg group launched with covert American
funds. There is no suggestion that these prominent Labour poli-
ticians have not acted in all innocence and with complete pro-
priety. But it could be asked how such perspicacious men could
[This article originally appeared in London, in 1975. |
188
How CIA Money Took the Teeth Out of British Socialism
189
fail to inquire about the source of the funds that have financed
the organizations and magazines which have been so helpful to
them for so long. Nevertheless, they are certainly proud of the
critical influence their activities had in the years following 1959
when they swung the British Labour Party away from its pledge
to nationalization, enshrined in the celebrated Clause IV, and
back toward the commitment to NATO from which the Cam-
paign for Nuclear Disarmament had deflected it. CIA operators
take the credit for helping them in this decisive intervention
which changed the course of modern British history. The cloak-
and-danger operations of America's Central Intelligence Agency
are only a small part of its total activities. Most of its $2,000
million budget and 80,000 personnel are devoted to the system-
atic collection of information — minute personal details about
tens of thousands of politicians and political organizations in
every country in the world, including Britain. And this data,
stored in the world's largest filing system at the CIA headquar-
ters in Langley, Virginia, is used not only to aid Washington's
policy machine, but in active political intervention overseas —
shaping the policies of political parties, making and unmaking
their leaders, boosting one internal faction against another, and
often establishing rival breakaway parties when other tactics
fail.
In fact the CIA carries out, at a more sophisticated level,
exactly the same sort of organized subversion as Stalin's Comin-
tern in its heyday. One of its targets in the years since World
War 1 1 has been the British Labour Party.
The Labour Party emerged from the war with immense pres-
tige. As the sole mass working-class party in Britain, it had the
support of a united trades union movement whose power had
been greatly enhanced by the war, and it had just achieved an
unprecedented electoral victory. The established social demo-
cratic parties of Europe had been destroyed by the dictators,
while in America all that remained of the socialist movement
was a handful of sects whose members were numbered in
hundreds. Labour was undisputed head of Europe's social dem-
ocratic family.
But as the euphoria wore off, old differences began to emerge
with prolonged postwar austerity. The left wanted more social-
ism and an accommodation with the Russians, while the right
wanted the battle against Communism to take precedence over
further reforms at home. And those who took this latter view
190
Richard Fletcher
organized themselves around the journal Socialist Commentary,
formerly the organ of anti-Marxist Socialists who had fled to
Britain from Hitler's Germany. The magazine was reorganized
in the autumn of 1947 with Anthony Crosland, Allan Flanders,
and Rita Hinden who had worked closely with the emigres as
leading contributors. And Socialist Commentary became the
mouthpiece of the right wing of the Labour Party, campaigning
against left-wingers like Aneurin Be van, whom they denounced
as dangerous extremists. Crosland, who ended the war as a cap-
tain in the Parachute Regiment, had been President of the Ox-
ford Union, and a year later, in 1947, became Fellow and lec-
turer in economics at Trinity College, Oxford. Flanders was a
former TUC official who became an academic specialist in in-
dustrial relations and later joined the Prices and Incomes Board
set up by the Wilson government. Rita Hinden, a University of
London academic from South Africa, was secretary of the Fa-
bian Colonial Bureau — an autonomous section of the Fabian
Society which she had set up and directed since the early forties.
In this position she exercised considerable influence with La-
bour ministers and officials in the Colonial Office, maintaining
close links with many overseas politicians.
The new Socialist Commentary immediately set out to alert
the British Labour movement to the growing dangers of interna-
tional communism, notably in apiece entitled "Cominformity,"
written by Flanders during a period spent in the United States
studying the American trade union movement. The journal's
American connections were further extended by its U.S. corre-
spondent, William C. Gausmann, who was soon to enter the
American Government Service, where he rose to take charge of
U.S. propaganda in North Vietnam, while support for the mod-
erate stand taken by Crosland, Flanders, and Hinden came from
David C. Williams, the London Correspondent of the New
Leader, an obscure New York weekly specializing in anti-com-
munism. Williams made it his business to join the British Labour
Party and to take an active part in the Fabian Society.
This close American interest in socialism on the other side of
the Atlantic was nothing new. During the war the American
trade unions had raised large sums to rescue European labor
leaders from the Nazis, and this had brought them closely in
touch with American military intelligence and, in particular,
with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), whose chief in
How CIA Money Took the Teeth Out of British Socialism
191
Switzerland and Germany from 1942 to 1945 was Allen W.
Dulles, later, of course, to become famous as head of the CIA in
its heyday.
The principal union official in these secret commando opera-
tions had been Jay Lovestone, a remarkable operator who had
switched from being the leader of the American Communist
Party to working secretly for the U.S. government. And as the
Allied armies advanced, Lovestone's men followed the soldiers
as political commissars, trying to make sure that the liberated
workers were provided with trade union and political leaders
acceptable to Washington — many of these leaders being the
emigres of the Socialist Commentary group. In France, Ger-
many, Italy, and Austria, the commissars provided lavish finan-
cial and material support for moderate Socialists who would
draw the sting from left-wing political movements, and the bene-
ficiaries from this assistance survive in European politics to this
day — though that is another story.
In America the New Leader came to provide one focus for
these activities, organizing a weekly meeting of minds for pro-
fessional anti-Communists in the unions, universities, and gov-
ernment service, both at home and abroad. It had a relatively
large paid staff and a world-wide network of overseas and roving
correspondents. Its guiding spirit as Executive Editor and busi-
ness manager was Sol Levitas, a Russian emigre who had
worked with Trotsky and Bukharin during the Russian Revolu-
tion of 1917 and had fled from Stalin's prisons to the U.S. in
1923, bringing with him a lifelong hatred of Bolshevism.
Amongst Levitas' "boys," as he liked to call them, were Melvin
J. Lasky, an ex-Trotsky ist from New York's City College who
joined the staff in 1941; Daniel Bell, a former Managing Editor
of the New Leader who is now a professor at Columbia Univer-
sity; and Irving Brown, Lovestone's hatchet man in the Euro-
pean trade unions.
The New Leader claimed to be independent, but in 1949 it
carried a piece by Allen Dulles advocating a "commission of
internal security," to examine subversive influences in the U.S.
and to "use the institutions of democracy to destroy them"
which, in the light of Dulles' work helping the White House
reorganize OSS as the Central Intelligence Agency, was rather
like the head of MI5 writing for the New Statesman. And at this
time too, although the New Leader was issuing frantic appeals
192
Richard Fletcher
for funds to pay off its $40,000 worth of debts, it started appear-
ing in April 1950 as a new New Leader with an expensive Time-
like magazine format.
The importance of this dramatically reborn publication for
British and European Labour parties was that it now began
openly to advocate the infiltration of foreign socialist parties,
echoing the arguments of James Burnham who, in his book The
Coming Defeat of Communism, proposed that "the Western
World, led by the United States, should go over to the offensive
by using the same sort of methods — open and covert — that the
Kremlin has so massively employed. " Allan Flanders contrib-
uted an article to the revamped magazine on the British Labour
Movement, and in 1954 Denis Healey, who had entered Parlia-
ment as a Labour MP in 1952, became the New Leader's London
correspondent.
American Cold War strategy, as Bumham and the New
Leader had proposed, now moved into the financing of world-
wide front organizations, and in June 1950 the free world's top
men of letters were duly assembled in the Titania Palace Theater
in the U.S. zone of Berlin, before an audience of 4,000, to
launch the Congress for Cultural Freedom, a body whose pur-
pose was to "defend freedom and democracy against the new
tyranny sweeping the world." It was no coincidence that the
main organizer and chairman of the congress was Melvin Lasky,
who in 1948 had been "lent" by the New Leader to the U.S.
High Commission in Berlin, where he had set up a successful
literary magazine, Der Monat, with the encouragement of Gen-
eral Lucius D. Clay, head of the military government. Nor that
the man chosen to head the permanent secretariat of the con-
gress was an official of the American military government, Mi-
chael Josselson, who administered and arranged the financing of
the vast organization.
The congress seemed to have unlimited funds which were said
to come from Jay Lovestone's union in America, and CCF, as it
came to be known, was soon organizing political seminars and
student exchanges, and publishing literature on a world-wide
basis in support of the new youth organizations which suddenly
emerged to fight the Communists — notably the International
Student Conference at Leiden in the Netherlands.
In 1953 the Congress for Cultural Freedom launched Encoun-
ter, an English language monthly which was an immediate suc-
cess under the editorship of Irving Kristol, another of Levitas'
How CIA Money Took the Teeth Out of British Socialism
193
New Leader proteges and an ex-Lovestoneite, and soon a bewil-
dering range of publications in several languages had joined the
CCF stable, with Encounter becoming one of the most influen-
tial journals of liberal opinion in the West.
As the CCF network grew it embraced many prominent fig-
ures in the British Labour Party — among them Anthony Cros-
Iand, who began attending CCF seminars, where he met Daniel
Bell, who was at this period moving away from journalistic red-
baiting in the New Leader toward academic respectability. Bell's
thinking was later summarized in his book The End of Ideology,
and it formed the basis of the new political thesis set out in the
major work that Crosland was now writing and which was pub-
lished in 1956 under the title The Future of Socialism. The book
had also been influenced by the arguments put forward at the
conference of the Congress for Cultural Freedom held in the
previous year in Milan, where principal participants had in-
cluded Hugh Gaitskell, Denis Healey, and Rita Hinden as well
as Daniel Bell and a bevy of American and European politicians
and academics.
Put at its simplest, Bell and his colleagues argued that growing
affluence had radically transformed the working class in Europe
— and Britain — which was now virtually indistinguishable from
the middle class, and thus Marx's theory of class struggle was no
longer relevant. Future political progress, they thought, would
involve the gradual reform of capitalism and the spread of equal-
ity and social welfare as a consequence of continued economic
growth.
Crosland 's book, though not original in content, was a major
achievement. In over 500 pages it clothed the long-held faith of
Labour's new leader Hugh Gaitskell in the academic respectabil-
ity of American political science and was immediately adopted
as the gospel of the party leadership. Labour's rank and file,
however, still clung to their grassroots socialism, and Gaitskell's
obvious preferences for the small coterie of cultured intellec-
tuals and visiting foreigners who met at his house in Frognal
Gardens, Hampstead, alienated the party faithful, and gave
added bitterness to the internecine quarrels that were to follow
Labour's defeat in the 1959 election.
In 1957 Melvin Lasky had taken over the editorship of En-
counter which had, by then, cornered the West's intelligentsia
through its prestige and the high fees it was able to pay. Lasky
was a trusted member of Gaitskell's inner circle and was often to
194
Richard Fletcher
be seen at his parties in Hampstead, while Gaitskell became at
the same time a regular contributor to the New Leader. Sol
Levitas would drop in at his house on his periodic tours to see
world leaders and visit the CCF in Paris.
It was during the fifties, furthermore, that Anthony Crosland,
Rita Hinden, and the other members of the Socialist Commen-
tary group adopted the argument put forcibly in the New Leader
that a strong united Europe was essential to protect the Atlantic
Alliance from Russian attack, and European and Atlantic unity
came to be synonymous in official thinking as Gaitskell and his
friends moved into the party leadership. They received transat-
lantic encouragement, furthermore, from a New York-based
group called the American Committee on United Eruope, whose
leadership was openly advertised in the New York Times as
including General Donovan, wartime head of OSS, George Mar-
shall, the U.S. Secretary of State, General Lucius D. Clay, and
Allen Dulles of the CIA.
This high-powered and lavishly funded pressure group—
whose thesis was essentially that a United Europe would defend
America's interest against Russia — financed in Europe the so-
called "European Movement," whose inspiration was a friend
of Hugh Gaitskell's, Joseph Retinger, an elderly Polish James
Bond, who, after a professional career as an iminence grise, had
come to rest at the Dutch court under the patronage of Prince
Bemhard.
Retinger had, furthermore, secretly persuaded Shepard Stone
of the U.S. High Commission in Germany to finance his Euro-
pean Movement out of so-called "counter-part funds" — Mar-
shall Aid repayments which the Americans banked in Europe.
Later he promoted select gatherings of European and American
politicians, businessmen, aristocrats, top civil servants, and mil-
itary leaders to propagate the ideals of Atlantic and European
unity. Invitations to these Bilderberg Group meetings — named
after the Dutch hotel where the first gathering was held in 1954 —
were issued personally by Prince Bernhard on Retinger's recom-
mendation. Few of those who received the card of invitation
embossed with the Royal Netherlands coat of arms declined to
spend three or four days in civilized discourse with the world's
leaders in luxurious surroundings — certainly not Hugh Gaitskell
and Denis Healey, who were founder members of the group
along with such diverse personalities as the president of Uni-
lever and Sir Robert Boothby.
Hew CIA Money Took the Teeth Out of British Socialism
195
Healey, an ex-Communist, had been head of the International
Department at Transport House before entering Parliament in
1951. He was a convinced supporter of Atlantic Union and
spread the message through Socialist Commentary and the New
Leader, for whom he wrote nearly 80 articles before joining the
Labour government as Defense Minister in 1964.
While top people were relaxing with Prince Bernhard, the
Congress for Cultural Freedom was establishing solid ties with
the coming man of the British Labour Party, Anthony Crosland,
who was by now acknowledged as the party's chief theoretician.
He had lost his seat at Westminster in the 1955 election, but in
the following years was traveling regularly to Paris to plan the
international seminars of the CCF with Melvin Lasky and Mi-
chael Josselson under the directorship of Daniel Bell. Michael
Josselson, who in 1967 admitted that he had for 17 years been
channeling CIA money into the CCF, has described to us Cros-
land's role at this period. Crosland's contribution, he says, was
"encouraging sympathetic people" to participate in the semi-
nars sponsored by the congress all over the world. Hugh Gait-
skell traveled in these years to congress functions in Milan 1955,
New Delhi 1957, the island of Rhodes 1958, and Berlin 1962.
Crosland himself traveled to Vienna in 1958, to Berlin in 1960,
and to Australia and Japan in 1964 on a congress-sponsored tour.
He was at this date a member of the International Council of
the CCF after nearly a decade working to remodel European
socialism in the image of the American Democratic Party, a
cause for the sake of which the CCF had financed a systematic
campaign of congresses, seminars, and private gatherings for
leading Socialists throughout Europe. This had been backed up
by the fullest publicity in Encounter, Preuves, Der Monat, and
the other CCF journals — whose influence was further extended
by discreet arrangements with Socialist Commentary for pub-
lishing each other's pamphlets and articles.
Rita Hinden was by now the editor of Socialist Commentary
and playing a similar role to Crosland in picking African partici-
pants for congress seminars. Michael Josselson describes her as
"a good friend of ours. We relied entirely on her advice for our
African operations." She also visited India and Japan on a CCF-
sponsored trip after the Suez crisis, speaking on the theme that
traditional socialism was irrelevant in a modern capitalist society
where there was full employment.
This was the nub of the matter. Many of Europe's Socialist
196
Richard Fletcher
parties still had old-fashioned Marxist notions written into their
rulebooks, which had become an embarrassment to their lead-
ers. A glaring example was the British Labour Party whose
Clause IV — "common ownership of the means of production,
distribution and exchange" and so on — sounded to some like a
passage from the Communist Manifesto. The proof of its irrelev-
ance seemed provided by the 1959 General Election in which
Anthony Crosland regained his seat at Westminster, but which
represented a catastrophic defeat for the Labour Party. The day
after Labour's defeat, Roy Jenkins, Anthony Crosland, and
Douglas Jay were among a small group who met with Gaitskell at
his home. They decided that the time had come for Labour to
drop its old commitments and get rid of its cloth cap image
which had become an electoral liability.
Douglas Jay immediately wrote the now celebrated article
which appeared in Forward the following week, calling for the
abandonment of Clause IV and a change in the Labour Party's
name. And early in 1960, Socialist Commentary commissioned
Mark Abram's firm. Research Services Ltd., to carry out an
attitude survey on "Why Labour Lost." The results were pub-
lished in the journal's May to August number, and they con-
firmed the Gaitskell thesis that nationalization was a liability.
This Abrams survey had been turned down by the Labour Party
Executive before the 1959 election as being too costly. But now
Socialist Commentary found the money to pay for it and in
February 1960 William Rodgers, General Secretary of the Fa-
bian Society since 1953, organized a letter of support to Gait-
skell signed by 15 young parliamentary candidates. Shortly aft-
erward, a steering committee was set up with Rodgers as
chairman, and including some of the signatories of the Gaitskell
letter together with Crosland, Roy Jenkins, Patrick Gordon
Walker, Jay, other party members from Oxford, and some sym-
pathetic journalists. This group started work on a manifesto to
be released in the event of Gaitskell's defeat in the defense
debate at the party conference. This duly occurred in the au-
tumn of 1960, when the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
triumphed in its campaign to win the Labour Party to a neutralist
program.
So in October 1960 Rodgers and his friends released their
manifesto in 25,000 copies with widespread press coverage.
Calling for "Victory for Sanity" — a dig at their old enemies, the
"Victory for Socialism" group — they appealed to party mem-
How CI A Money Took the Teeth Out of British Socialism
197
bers to rally behind Gaitskell and his conference call to "fight
and fight and fight again." They also issued an appeal for funds
with which to continue the campaign, and in mid-November
Rodgers reported to the steering committee that many small
donations had been received, together with a large sum from a
source which wished to remain anonymous.
Rodgers' windfall enabled the group to take a permanent of-
fice and appoint paid staff. The title "Campaign for Democratic
Socialism" was chosen and a six-man Executive Committee set
up with Rodgers as full-time paid Chairman. The Committee was
told that available funds were sufficient for a year's activities,
and CDS thus had a start on its opponents who, in spite of their
widespread support in Labour constituencies and trade-unions,
were unable to raise more than a few hundred pounds over the
following year and had to rely entirely on volunteer workers. At
CDS's disposal were fieldworkers in the constituencies and un-
ions, whom it supported with traveling expenses, literature, and
organizational backup, tens of thousands of copies of the mani-
festo, pamphlets and other publications, plus a regular bulletin,
Campaign, circulated free of charge to a large mailing list within
the movement. And all this was produced without a single sub-
scription-paying member.
CDS achieved its objectives. The unions cracked under the
pressure and the Labour Party returned to the Atlantic fold at
the party conference in 1961 after a campaign by the most effec-
tive pressure group the party had ever seen. Rodgers was its
driving force. With financial backing assured, he created an or-
ganization whose influence was out of all proportion to its origi-
nal support among party members. Whoever put up the money
could justly claim to have changed the course of the history of
the Labour Party and Britain in the 1960s.
Nor did the importance of CDS vanish totally after it had
restored the Labour Party to commitment to NATO, for its ad-
herents felt bitterly betrayed when Hugh Gaitskell later qualified
his support for Common Market entry at the Brighton Confer-
ence in 1962. Standing at the back of the hall Rodgers turned to
the party press officer, John Harris — later Roy Jenkins' PR man
— and said "I'm through with that man, John." Anthony Cros-
land, furthermore, supported Gaitskell's compromise and so
also lost the backing of the ardent marketeers, who hencefor-
ward rallied around Roy Jenkins.
The main significance of all these divisions was that they
198
Richard Fletcher
helped Harold Wilson to capture the leadership on Gaitskell's
death. Finding the parliamentary party molded in the Gaitskell
image, its policies firmly rooted in Crosland's Future of Social-
ism, Wilson made no attempt to alter the package which became
the program of the next Labour Government.
Throughout this postwar period the party apparatus remained
firmly in orthodox hands, particularly the International Depart-
ment of which Denis Healey had been head until he entered
Parliament in 1951. Then in 1965 his old post was taken over by
J. Gwyn Morgan, one of the rising generation of party and union
officials whose careers began in the National Union of Students,
to whose presidency he had been elected in 1960 on an anti-
Communist ticket. As President he took charge of international
affairs, representing the Union in the International Student Con-
ference at Leiden, and on leaving the NUS in 1962 he became
Assistant General Secretary of ISC in charge of finance. In this
capacity he negotiated with the American foundations which
supplied the bulk of ISC funds and supervised expenditure of
the several million dollars devoted to world-wide propaganda
and organization. In 1964 he became Secretary General of ISC.
In his five years' association with the organization he visited
over 80 different countries and got to know personally many
heads of government and leaders of the world's principal social
democratic parties. An ardent pro-European and active sup-
porter of Roy Jenkins, he was an obvious choice to fill the va-
cant slot as head of Labour's Overseas Department at the begin-
ning of 1965. Two years later Morgan was promoted to the
newly created post of Assistant General Secretary of the Labour
Party, with the expectation that he would fill the top job on
Harry Nicholas' retirement.
But early in 1967 the U.S. journal Ramparts revealed that
since the early Fifties the National Student Association of
America had, with the active connivance of its elected officers,
received massive subventions from the CIA through dummy
foundations and that one of these was the Fund for Youth and
Student Affairs which supplied most of the budget of ISC. The
International Student Conference, it appeared, had been set up
by British and American intelligence in 1950 to counteract the
Communist peace offensive, and the CIA had supplied over 90%
of its finance. The Congress for Cultural Freedom was similarly
compromised. Michael Josselson admitted that he had been
channeling CIA money into the organization ever since its foun-
How CIA Money Took the Teeth Out o f British Socialism
199
dation — lately at the rate of about a million dollars a year — to
support some 20 journals and a world-wide program of political
and cultural activities. Writing of Sol Levitas at the time of his
death in 1961, the editor of the New Leader, William Bohm,
said, "The most amazing part of the journalistic miracle was the
man's gift for garnering the funds which were necessary to keep
our paper solvent from week to week and year to year. I cannot
pretend to explain how this miracle was achieved ... we always
worked in an atmosphere of carefree security. We knew that the
necessary money would come from somewhere and that our
cheques would be forthcoming."
The "Miracle" was resolved by the New York Times: the
American Labour Conference for International Affairs which
ran the New Leader had for many years been receiving regular
subventions from the J. M. Kaplan Fund, a CIA conduit.
The CIA had taken the lessons taught back in the early Fifties
by Bumham and the New Leader to heart. With its army of ex-
Communists and willing Socialists it had for a while beaten the
Communists at their own game — but unfortunately it had not
known when to stop and now the whole structure was threat-
ened with collapse. Rallying to the Agency's support, Thomas
Braden, the official responsible for its move into private organi-
zations, and Executive Director of the American Committee on
United Europe, explained that Irving Brown and Lovestone had
done a fine job in cleaning up the unions in postwar Europe.
When they ran out of money, he said, he had persuaded Dulles
to back them, and from this beginning the world-wide operation
mushroomed.
Another ex-CIA official, Richard Bissell, who organized the
Bay of Pigs invasion, explained the Agency's attitude to foreign
politicians: "Only by knowing the principal players well do you
have a chance of careful prediction. There is real scope for
action in this area: the technique is essentially that of 'penetra-
tion' . . . Many of the 'penetrations' don't take the form of
'hiring' but of establishing friendly relationships which may or
may not be furthered by the provision of money from time to
time. In some countries the CIA representative has served as a
close counsellor ... of the chief of state."
After these disclosures the CCF changed its name to the Inter-
national Association for Cultural Freedom. Michael Josselson
resigned — but was retained as a consultant — and the Ford Foun-
dation agreed to pick up the bills. And the Director of the new
200
Richard Fletcher
Association is none other than Shepard Stone, the Bilderberg
organizer who channeled U.S. government money to Joseph
Retinger in the early Fifties to build the European Movement
and then became International Director of the Ford Foundation.
When Rita Hinden died at the end of last year after 20 years as
editor of Socialist Commentary, George Thomson — a pillar of
CDS who resigned recently from Labour's front bench with Roy
Jenkins — paid tribute to her key role in transforming the Labour
Party. In the Fifties, he said, her "ideas were greeted with out-
raged cries of 'Revisionism.' But by the mid-Sixties the revision-
ism of Socialist Commentary had become the orthodoxy of the
Labour Movement." And Denis Healey's comment was equally
revealing. "Only Sol Levitas of the American New Leader, " he
said, "had a comparable capacity for exercising a wide political
influence with negligible material resources." He obviously
hadn't paid a visit to Companies House whose Register shows
that in recent years Socialist Commentary has been drawing on a
capital reserve of over £75,000.
Through its network of front organizations, magazines, and
subsidies, the CIA in the late Fifties and early Sixties had a
decisive effect on socialism throughout Western Europe, and in
Britain in particular, but the Gaitskellism that it backed is now
on the retreat. For those Labour leaders who, in all innocence,
built their careers in the seminars of the Congress for Cultural
Freedom and the columns of Encounter or the New Leader,
rather than in the trade union branch or on the conference floor,
are now feeling the lack of a mass base within the party.
Attacked by Gaitskell at the Labour Party Conference in 1960
as a fellow traveler, Michael Foot retorted "but, who are they
traveling with?" and the question is one that other members of
the party echo. For the chairmen of the world's largest capitalist
organizations, monarchists, ex-Nazis, commanders of the
American and German forces, the Crown Princes of Europe,
and CIA agents do indeed make strange traveling companions
for Socialists.
The CIA
Backs the
Common Market
by Steve Weissman, Phil
Kelly, and Mark Hosenball
Cord Meyer Jr.'s main task as head of the U.S. Central Intelli-
gence Agency's operation here may be to ensure Britain's entry
into the Common Market. New evidence developed by investi-
gators in Britain and America shows that Meyer and his prede-
cessor as head of the CIA's International Organization Division,
Tom Braden, engaged in a major operation in the 1950s and 60s
to secretly build up the groups which are now pushing Britain
into Europe.
The European Movement, the elite international pressure
group which takes much of the credit for the founding of the
Common Market, took secret U.S. funding. Its British Council
is currently leading the "Keep Britain In" Campaign. The Euro-
pean Youth Campaign, which was the European Movement's
most active component in the Fifties, was almost totally funded
by the American government. Members of organizations affili-
ated to the campaign are still active in pro- Europe circles.
[This article first appeared as "Uncle Sam Goes to Market"
in the May 23, 1975, issue of Time Out. in London.]
201
202
Steve Weissman, Phil Kelly and Mark Hosenball
The chief vehicle in the covert funding of pro-Europe groups
was the CIA-created American Committee on a United Europe.
Founded in 1949 by Major General William J. Donovan, head of
American wartime intelligence, the committee kicked off its pro-
Europe campaign by inviting leading Europeans over to speak in
America, among them Sir Winston Churchill, Lord Layton,
EEC founders Paul Henri-Spaak and Robert Schuman. More
formally organized in 1950, the Committee coopted long-time
CIA director Allen Dulles to be its Vice Chairman, and em-
ployed Tom Braden as its Executive Director. Braden at the
time was head of a division of the CIA's "department of Dirty
Tricks" which, he later revealed, ran an entire network of politi-
cal "front" organizations which served CIA purposes. In 1967,
it was revealed that the Paris-based Congress for Cultural Free-
dom and its London magazine, Encounter, were part of this
network. But until recently little was known about the secret
work of the American Committee on a United Europe.
The Committee made no secret of its Cold War views. To its
delight, the nascent European Movement wanted a suprana-
tional Western bloc, a United States of Europe. More important,
the European Movement backed the rearmament of Germany,
which the U.S. government saw as key to winning the Cold War
with Russia and to economic expansion of the West. The U.S.
was particularly interested in incorporating the European states
into a European Defense Community which would make such
rearmament politically acceptable.
To do this, it backed the European Movement financially.
Movement activists like Duncan Sandys came to the U.S. to
speak at fund-raising dinners sponsored by the American Com-
mittee. The response was gratifying, but not sufficient. So the
American Committee, with its direct links to the CIA's clandes-
tine operators, became a conduit for secret U.S. government
subsidies to the Europeans.
During the period 1947-1953 about £380,000 of U.S. govern-
ment money passed secretly from the CIA-controlled American
Committee to the European Movement. The subsidies com-
prised almost half of the European Movement's total budget.
(The committee's secret funding role became known through the
discovery of an obscure Oxford doctoral thesis written by one
F. Rebattet, the son of a former secretary-general of the Euro-
pean Movement, who had access to the Movement's secret
archives.)
The largest secret contribution to Europe was sparked off by
The CIA Backs the Common Market
203
the success of a massive Communist Youth Rally in 1951 in East
Berlin. When John J. McCloy, U.S. High Commissioner for
Germany, saw intelligence films of the rally, he instructed his
staff to organize a response. An aide, Shepard Stone, was sent to
see top officials of the European Movement. He asked them
whether they were willing to stage an anti-communist counter
rally. At first, the Europeans agreed. But, to the annoyance of
the Americans, they later decided instead to conduct an ongoing
propaganda campaign to win European youth to the idea of Eu-
ropean unity.
Thus was bom the European Youth Campaign. It lasted from
1951 to 1959, and was by far the most active component of the
European Movement during that period. In one year alone
(1952), the Campaign organized 1899 sessions and conferences,
900 cinema shows, distributed 1.8 million brochures, staged 21
exhibitions, and managed to secure 2,400 minutes of radio time
for the cause of European unity. Secretary of the British section
of the European Youth Campaign was Maurice Foley, later a
Labour MP and Minister. Virtually every penny he, and the
Campaign's other organizers spent, came from the U.S.
government.
In eight years £1 .34 million of secret money was passed on to
the Youth Campaign by the CIA's American Committee on a
United Europe. During this period, in 1954, an enthusiastic pro-
European named Cord Meyer Jr. took over the funding adminis-
tration. He is now CIA chief in London.
The CIA funding of pro-Europe student groups through
"conduit" foundations was exposed by Ramparts Magazine in
1967. Records now in the possession of a U.S. Congress sub-
committee suggest such funding may have amounted to
hundreds of thousands of pounds.
If secret CIA financing of European groups has continued
since 1967, it's been well camouflaged. When we contacted Er-
nest Wistrich, current director of the European Movement in
Britain, he denied that his particular organization, which was
first incorporated in 1954, had ever received CIA money, and
claimed that when he joined it in 1967, it was nearly broke and
he had to "build it up from almost nothing."
M>ke Fallon, secretary-general of the British Youth European
Federalists and Youth Organizer of the current Britain in Eu-
rope campaign, conceded last week that the CIA did provide
funds in the past for European Youth activities. "It did in the
'50s," he said. "I only wish it did now!"
The CIA
Makes the News
by Steve Weissman
When the American Central Intelligence Agency recently let slip
that they had made extensive use of certain unnamed journal-
ists, both for spying and for propaganda, newshounds the world
over began trotting out long lists of likely suspects. One story
that actually appeared in print told of the then CIA Director,
William Colby, openly admitting the Agency's manipulation of
the British-owned wire service, Reuters. Another story recalled
earlier CIA media operations, from Radio Free Europe to the
Rome Daily American, and everywhere eager young reporters
tried desperately to uncover the names of those 11 — or was it
12? — full-time CIA staffers supposedly doing their dirty tricks
under journalistic cover.
It was all great fun while it lasted — newsmen chasing their
own tail — and thanks to some very wary editors, few new faces
ever came to light. But one name that did still haunts the CIA
(This article first appeared as "CIA, Students of Conflict" in
the August 1976 issue of Embassy Magazine, in London.]
204
The CIA Makes the News
205
and the world's press — a highly urbane journalist named Brian
Crozier.
As far as anyone knew before the fur went flying, Crozier was
just another of London's well-placed wordsmiths. An Australian
by birth, he had made his mark as editor of the Economist's
confidential Foreign Report, author of an admiring biography of
the Spanish dictator Francisco Franco, and chief of an interna-
tional news service called Forum World Features and a think-
tank on problems of terrorism and guerrilla warfare, the widely
quoted Institute for the Study of Conflict.
This at least was how Crozier looked before he fell victim to
the American penchant for slugging things out in public. The
after view was a bit seamier, as several of those famous Wash-
ington leaks — and a few from London as well — revealed that the
CIA secretly owned Crozier' s Forum World Features and that
they had also put up the money to start his Institute for the
Study of Conflict. And so Crozier became the man in the middle
— one of the CIA journalists who got caught making the news.
Crozier, of course, isn't the only one to be acutely embar-
rassed by the CIA scandals. But his story touches on what might
become one of the more intriguing questions of the entire affair.
For even as the Congress was investigating some of Crozier's
covert propaganda activities in Latin America, he and his col-
leagues were helping to set up a new Institute for the Study of
Conflict right in the heart of Washington, D.C. And among the
Americans involved with him in this highly suspect intervention
into the American political scene are two of the most likely
candidates to serve as the next Secretary of State.
The first inkling that Crozier was standing in the line of fire
came in April 1975, when a team of British journalists from the
TV series "World in Action" descended on Washington to do a
story on the CIA. The team talked to the usual assortment of
insiders and soon uncovered a fascinating memo which pur-
ported to have come from inside CIA headquarters. The memo
appeared to have been written in May 1968; it was addressed to
the Director of Central Intelligence (at the time Richard Helms)
and it gave "an operational summary" of a CIA propaganda
outfit located in London and called Forum World Features
(FWF).
"In its first two years," the memo explained, "FWF has pro-
vided the United States with a significant means to counter Com-
munist propaganda, and has become a respected feature service
206
Steve Weissman
well on the way to a position of prestige in the journalism
world."
The memo also mentioned i n a handwritten note that Forum
was "run with the knowledge and cooperation of British
Intelligence."
Further checking confirmed that the memo was authentic and
that the CIA had originally created a Forum news service as part
of an earlier operation, the heavily funded Congress for Cultural
Freedom. Then in 1965, as the Cultural Freedom group and its
lead magazine, Encounter, came under growing suspicion, the
CIA renamed the news service Forum World Features, and
shifted it to the cover of a Delaware corporation called Kern
House Enterprises — a CIA "proprietary" headed by the million-
aire businessman John Hay Whitney, a former U.S. Ambassa-
dor to the Court of St. James's and publisher of the International
Herald Tribune.
The Agency turned to Crozier to oversee operations in Lon-
don, and as far as anyone knew, Forum World Features was a
small commercial news service, selling weekly packets of fea-
ture stories to as many as SO newspapers all over the world.
Why did the CIA go to all this trouble? Chiefly to make propa-
ganda. Among the well-written and generally innocuous articles
that Forum sent out each week, the CIA could easily slip in
straight American propaganda, especially when it came to the
war in Vietnam, or the campaign against the Allende govern-
ment in Chile.
The Agency could also use Forum to send almost anyone
anywhere as "a journalist," and to give research and other
backup to good friends such as Sir Robert Thompson, the for-
mer British security chief in Malaya, and a key advisor to the
Americans on Vietnam. Control, of course, remained with the
Americans, who had at least one "case officer" in the Forum
office — a career CIA man named Robert Gene Gately, who was
last seen as a member of the CIA Station in the American Em-
bassy in Bangkok, Thailand.
This, in brief, was the story as it came together in the spring of
1975, and when the editor of "World in Action" decided that it
was too hot to handle on TV, it filtered down to the London
news and entertainment weekly Time Out, and from there to the
pages of the Guardian, the Irish Times, the Washington Post,
and even John Hay Whitney's own International Herald
Tribune.
The CIA Makes the News
207
Later, as the congressional investigations heated up, a CIA
spokesman quietly admitted to the Washington Post that the
story was true and that the CIA did own Forum. But by the time
anyone could get to the scene of the crime, Crozier had com-
pletely shut down the entire Forum operation. As it was ex-
plained by the sympathetic London Sunday Times, costs were
going up, and Forum simply ran out of money.
And so the story — like Forum itself — would have died right
there if Crozier had only followed the first rule of covert opera-
tions: When your cover is blown, keep quiet. But Crozier did
just the opposite. Instead of quietly nursing his wounds, he
feigned innocence and angrily yelled "Rape!"
It was all a "smear campaign," he charged. And he would not
talk to the Time Out journalists because they were all part of
"the conspiracy."
Now to most journalists — in fact, to most people — those are
fighting words, and evidently someone took offense. Within
days of Crozier's first blast, a weary postman trundled up to
Time Out with several bundles of documents which appeared to
have come from the internal files of Crozier's other operation,
the Institute for the Study of Conflict.
Who had sent them? And more important, were they real?
Time Out's staff were wary, and as one of the journalists on the
story, I can report that we all had visions of our favorite intelli-
gence agency doctoring up phony documents just to entrap us in
criminal libel. But again Crozier saved the story. Hearing that
Time Out had the documents, he charged that someone had
stolen them from the Institute, and within hours two highly em-
barrassed police detectives — "We don't like to get involved in
these journalistic disputes," they explained — were calling at my
flat. The documents, it seemed, were very real indeed.
As the story later appeared in Time Out, the documents
showed in intimate detail how the Institute had grown directly
out of the small library and research staff that the CIA's Kern
House Enterprises had financed within Forum World Features.
By 1968, Crozier was calling this his Current Affairs Research
Services Center, and in January 1970 he wrote to Sir Peter Wilk-
inson (later Coordinator of Intelligence and Security in the Brit-
ish Cabinet Office) and asked his help in transforming the Forum
research unit into a full-fledged Institute for the Study of
Conflict.
Was the Institute, like Forum, intended as a covert operation?
208
Steve Weissman
The evidence suggests that it was, though not necessarily an
American operation. In fact, in a letter to the International Her-
ald Tribune, the well-known foreign correspondent Bernard
Nossiter claimed that he had been told by a senior official in
British intelligence that Crozier's Institute was actually run by
the British. Perhaps. But, as the internal documents show, the
Institute worked hand in glove with Forum and the CIA.
Crozier continued to run both Forum and the Institute. The
two operations shared writers, and even certain staff. And as
with Forum, the money to start the Institute and its monthly
"Conflict Studies" came from the CIA's Kern House Enter-
prises. Many of Forum's internal records ended up in the Insti-
tute's files which were delivered to Time Out.
As with many of their front organizations, the Agency evi-
dently wanted the Institute to stand on its own feet. But as late
as 1972, where the presently available records stop, Kern House
was still providing a small subsidy, which the Institute's annual
budget called essential to financial viability. Present records also
suggest the possibility, as yet unconfirmed, of more recent CIA
funding.
From the start, the CIA's interest in the Institute appears to
have been less in research than in propaganda. Few, if any, of
the Institute's widely quoted publications have broken any new
ground intellectually. But they have given academic respectabil-
ity to old anti-Communist cliches, whether on Vietnam or An-
gola. And they have pushed a revival of Cold War thinking in the
face of detente, and a stiffening of preemptive police and mili-
tary measures to combat "subversion" and industrial unrest.
The trick, of course, is in the magic word "Institute." Where
the CIA used Forum to reach newspaper readers, and the earlier
Congress for Cultural Freedom to woo intellectuals, Crozier's
Institute offered professional and authoritative-sounding ana-
lyses, both for the general public and for more specialized audi-
ences of academics, policy makers, police officials, and military
commanders.
In 1972, for example, the Institute joined with the Confedera-
tion of British Industries to launch a private campaign against
"subversive elements." The Institute then published a special
report on "Sources of Conflict in British Industry," and in early
1974, just as the striking miners forced Prime Minister Edward
Heath to call elections, the London Observer ran a section of the
report blaming left-wing militants for Britain's industrial unrest.
The CIA Makes the News
209
It now appears from the Institute's own correspondence that
most of the "evidence" for the red-baiting allegations came
from the files of well-known and widely disregarded right-wing
organizations.
Even closer to the bone, the Institute prepared a special man-
ual on counterinsurgency for the British police and regularly
participates in training programs at the National Defence Col-
lege and the Police College. The Institute's "line" appears to
encourage preemptive surveillance and other measures against a
broad range of "subversives," a term which could easily include
law-abiding trade union militants and anti-establishment
intellectuals.
The theory, as one staff member put it, seemed to be that the
police have to deal with subversion because it might lead to
terrorism. Or, alternatively, one might draw a more sinister in-
terpretation from a recent magazine article in which Crozier
looked to the armed forces to step in following the breakdown of
Western democracy. As Crozier sees it, the breakdown — and
the subsequent military intervention — seem to be inevitable.
Like Forum, of course, the Institute's impact has extended far
beyond its base in Britain. In France, a small group around
former prime minister Antoine Pinay helped pay for an Institute
study on "European Security and the Soviet Problem." The
study took a predictably Cold War turn, and according to inter-
nal records, the aging Pinay and his friends were so delighted
that they personally showed it to Nixon, Pompidou, Kissinger,
and the Pope.
Similarly, in the Netherlands, Crozier and his colleagues work
closely with the East-West Institute and its International Docu-
mentation and Information Centre, which has gained fame for
its who's-who and what's-what listings of left-wing activities in
Europe.
The Institute's records also show close contacts with top pol-
ice officials in Rhodesia and South Africa, as well as with other
leaders around the world. But Crozier's biggest impact could
come in the United States, despite a supposed ban on any CIA-
backed propaganda within the country. Crozier himself has ap-
peared before the Senate Subcommittee on Internal Security to
testify on what he called "transnational terrorism," while the
Institute has consistently worked with American counterparts
on joint conferences and publications. This cooperation has ex-
panded over the years, and finally in March 1975, the Washing-
210
Steve Weissman
ton Institute for the Study of Conflict held its first meeting in
Washington.
For all the success, however, Crozier appears to be losing his
credibility. Despite his denials, too many people now know of
the CIA's role in both Forum World Features and the Institute
for the Study of Conflict, and every time the story is told, Cro-
zier allows himself to show more and more of his anger in pub-
lic. And no wonder. Like so many of the CIA's covert propa-
gandists, he had a good thing going, and he's now in danger of
losing it all.
The CIA in
Switzerland
by Philip Agee
The American Central Intelligence Agency has a sizable pres-
ence in Switzerland with offices in the U.S. Embassy in Bern, in
the Consulate in Zurich, and in the U.S. Mission to the Euro-
pean Office of the United Nations and Other International Or-
ganizations in Geneva. An analysis of available documents on
the American missions in these cities has revealed at least one
CIA officer in Zurich, about nine in Bern, and about 20 in
Geneva.
(Until recently) the CIA Station in the Bem Embassy (was) is
headed by Frank W. Jones Jr., 55, who came to Bem in August
1973. Jones is a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West
Point and has spent almost 20 years in the CIA. His overseas
assignments prior to Bem were in Munich (1958-1959), Warsaw
(1959-1962), Nicosia (1962-1965), Oslo (1968-1970), and Geneva
(1970-1973). In all of his assignments Jones has worked under
[This article was written in July 1976. in London. It has not
previously been published.]
211
212
Philip Agee
cover as a Department of State official in the U.S. Mission
where he was assigned.
Other CIA officers in the Bern Embassy would include Terrell
W. Hutchison, an Attache; and Paul Van Marx, another At-
tache. Recently assigned in Bern as CIA communications offi-
cers are Bruce Chaney, James Mitchell, and Joseph White.
The only officer in the Bern group that I knew personally is
Paul Van Marx, 50, whom I first met while at Headquarters
briefly in 1964. After having worked in the CIA's Western Euro-
pean Division and having served under cover in the U.S. Consu-
late in Zurich (1958-1963), Van Marx was reassigned to the
Agency's Western Hemisphere Division. In 1964 he was the
officer in charge of the Uruguayan Desk, and in 1965 he was
assigned to the U.S. Embassy in Bogota, Colombia, under cover
as a political officer.
The only CIA officer so far identified as working in the Zurich
Consulate is Harvey Ginsburg, 54, who has apparently been in
Zurich since 1968. Ginsburg's previous assignments were in The
Hague (1955-1960) and London (1964-1968) after having at-
tended Yale and Oxford universities in the late 1940s and early
1950s.
The largest CIA office in Switzerland is in the Geneva Mis-
sion. While in the CIA, I learned that this office is responsible
for the Agency's efforts to penetrate the UN and other interna-
tional organizations in Geneva, particularly the ILO and the
international trade unions that have their headquarters in Ge-
neva. Of special importance for the CIA in Geneva, as in other
European cities such as Paris, London, and Brussels, is the
recruitment of people from Third World countries who may be
working in the UN or in the other international organizations, or
in Third World official missions in Geneva. From relative safety,
operations to recruit these people are made, with the expecta-
tion that after working for the CIA in Geneva, the people will
continue when they return to their countries of origin.
The main CIA office in the Geneva Mission is called the Office
of the Special Assistant, and it occupies the fifth floor of the
Mission building. About 16 people work on this floor, all of
whom appear to be CIA employees except Robert Pfeiffer who
is a State Department officer responsible for labor affairs. Per-
haps his office is close to the CIA because of the CIA's need to
coordinate constantly their Geneva-based labor operations with
the State Department labor affairs officer which is normal proce-
The CIA in Switzerland
213
dure. Indeed PfeifTer may well be working under CIA direction
in trade union matters.
In Geneva, a senior CIA officer in this section is Clarence
Barbier, 54, whose previous assignments under State Depart-
ment cover were to Saigon (1958-1962), Singapore (1962-1964),
and Jakarta ( 1966-1969). Barbier probably was the Chief of Sta-
tion in Jakarta, assisting the Indonesian military government,
which the CIA helped bring to power, in its repressive opera-
tions following the 1965 coup.
Other CIA officers in the Special Assistant's office include:
Throop Wilder, cover title: First Secretary in UN Spe-
cialized Agencies affairs, e.g., ILO.
Kevin Maloy, Second Secretary in UN Specialized
Agencies affairs.
Nancy Ford, Attache in UN Specialized Agencies
affairs.
Dennis Bleam, Attache.
CIA officers under cover in other sections of the mission are
Ronald Cerra in the Political Section as a Second Secretary and
Leo Sandel in the International Economic Affairs section as a
First Secretary.
Additionally, the CIA's Geneva office includes about four
clerical secretaries and two communications officers: Alan
Lourie and John Rose.
Besides the CIA's work against the UN specialized agencies
in Geneva, and the other international organizations headquar-
tered in Switzerland, the three offices would also have a number
of other targets. The Bern Station no doubt is responsible for
operations to penetrate the Swiss government, seeking "agents
of influence" and for liaison operations with the Swiss security
services. This Station also would be responsible for operations
against the Soviet Embassy in Bern as well as the embassies of
all the other socialist countries. Some of these operations would
be effected jointly with the Swiss services and others would be
undertaken without the knowledge of Swiss services. Penetra-
tion of the Swiss services through recruitments of Swiss security
214
Philip Agee
officials is of course one of the important purposes in engaging in
liaison and joint operations with the Swiss.
One final area of CIA operations in Switzerland concerns third
countries such as France and Italy. In January 1976 it was re-
vealed in Washington that during the previous month President
Ford had approved the CIA's spending of six million dollars
between then and the next Italian elections — then thought to
occur most probably in 1977. Because of the sensitivity of politi-
cal intervention in a sister NATO country, these operations may
well be staged from a neighboring country such as Switzerland,
particularly the meetings with agents and the passing of money.
Such operations no doubt would involve close supervision by
Ambassador Davis in Switzerland as well as by the Ambassador
in the target country. The CIA's support for Italian neofascists,
as revealed in the report of the House of Representatives Select
Committee on Intelligence (the Pike committee), would prob-
ably also require meetings and passage of money outside of
Italy, most probably in Switzerland.
Goodbye
Bruce Hutchins
by Jan Guillou and
Roger Wallis
The American espionage agency, the CIA, has been permitted to
work freely in Sweden for almost 20 years. Never in that time
has an American CIA man been taken to court or deported. The
CIA has worked under the protection of the Swedish Secret
Service (SAPO)and the Intelligence Service (IB).
Sweden remains a key area for CIA work. A large percentage
of the American Embassy staff are employed by the CIA. They
infiltrate the Foreign Ministry and the mass media. They spy on
Swedish as well as on foreign interests in Sweden. They continu-
ously break Swedish law and act as nonchalantly as if they were
in their own backyard.
Eleven months ago, however, the CIA cornered the wrong
man — a free-lance journalist named Arthur Opot. And that is
where the present story begins.
[This article first appeared as "CIA i Sverige" in the March
4-17, 1976, issue of Folket i Bitd-Kulturfront, in Stockholm,
Sweden.]
215
216
Jan Guillou and Roger Wallis
Arthur Opot has a serve that lands far outside the tennis court
or else sneaks over the net like a boiled potato. His backhand is
even worse. He is, in short, a novice on the court. Still, it gives
him exercise, and so Arthur and his acquaintances among the
African diplomats in Stockholm used to play tennis every Satur-
day in Solna in the outskirts of town.
It was after one of these amateurish matches in April 1975,
and Arthur was sitting alone drinking orange juice in the club-
house. Two Americans stood near his table. One of them ex-
cused himself, saying that he had just gotten a telephone call and
had to return to work. The other American, named Bruce,
turned to Arthur and suggested a game, as he had suddenly lost
his partner. . . .
Afterwards, as they drank orange juice and talked politics,
generally Bruce joked around lightheartedly. He told Arthur that
he was an American diplomat in the Embassy's "political sec-
tion." Then he looked at his watch, excused himself, and left.
The CIA had established the first contact. Everything had
been thought out in detail, and the plans for recruiting Arthur
had already been described in an initial file, together with facts
about Arthur that the CIA had already collected through other
contacts. Preliminary analysis had shown that it would be worth
the effort for one of the CIA station's own officers to try to
recruit him directly. What's more, the CIA thought that they had
a hold on Arthur. So the rest of the recruiting operation prom-
ised to be pure routine.
As if by accident, Bruce and some of his friends happened to
be playing tennis the following Saturday at the same time as
Arthur. They needed a fourth for doubles, and after the match
Bruce and Arthur talked. Bruce offered Arthur lunch, saying
that the conversation had been so interesting that they really
must continue.
And so the recruiting went on according to plan. The next stop
was lunch at the Gondolen Restaurant on May 5. Bruce talked
mostly about China and how "the Company" (CIA men always
call it "the Company") was about to investigate a potential de-
fector at the Chinese Embassy in Stockholm. And now that they
had gotten into the subject, if an independent person — like, for
example, Arthur — would help out in the operation, he would be
very well paid. Not in Sweden, of course, where all the money
would go for taxes. But with discretion and without taxes to a
bank account in Switzerland.
Goodbye Bruce Hutchins
217
Bruce ordered another whiskey. He lifted the glass and al-
lowed the yellow liquid to swirl around. "Arthur, let me put it
this way," he said. "If you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours."
The recruiting had reached the crucial point, but Bruce
showed nothing of the nervousness he must have felt. Even in
Sweden, people sometimes stand up at this point, finish their
whiskey, leave the table, and ask never to be contacted again.
But Arthur stayed. The whole thing seemed almost unbelieva-
ble, so much so that Arthur thought the bit about "scratching his
back" might be a homosexual advance. Still, Bruce was clearly
telling him that he worked for the CIA and that he offered money
to people willing to cooperate. It was all too unreal, and by the
end of the long lunch Bruce was talking of other things.
Following this explicit recruiting attempt by the CIA, Arthur
went directly to two of his colleagues at Radio Sweden's Foreign
Department, Roger Wallis and Kim Loughran. To their surprise,
he told them that the CIA had just tried to recruit him. The three
of them discussed what had happened, and soon they came to an
agreement. If Arthur's story held up, this was a chance that
every journalist dreams about — to hook the CIA without any
effort. It could be risky, of course, like fishing for cod and sud-
denly hooking a two-meter-long shark. So they decided to wait
until the possibility of writing an article became clearer.
Some days later, Bruce telephoned Arthur and invited him for
another lunch — at the Djurgardsbrunns Vardshus. This time,
Bruce was with two colleagues, one of them the CIA Station
Chief in Stockholm, Paul Garbler. The conversation touched on
various topics, like what it was like being a foreigner in Stock-
holm, American policy, and political developments in Africa.
By now, the recruitment had moved to a level where the "case
officer" — Bruce Hutchins — was using the help of colleagues to
assess his victim. Every intelligence agency tries carefully to
evaluate a potential agent's personality, and above all, the
means they might use to buy or threaten him into service. What
is the victim's attitude toward liquor? Is money more important
than ambition? If so, how much will it cost? What are his prefer-
ences in food and wine? How to assess his general political
outlook? His attitude toward communism?
During the following weeks, Bruce Hutchins thought he was
slowly turning the screw. From the beginning, it must have
seemed as if Arthur was curious (which he was) and, later, as if
he was slowly but surely sliding into something that implied
218
Jan Guillou and Roger Wallis
acceptance. Then Hutchins played his trump card. And all of a
sudden it was no longer a half-joking piece of journalism into
which Arthur had been drawn. In a surprising twist, it became
dead serious.
Nearly everyone has a crucial weakness. It might be some-
thing in his personality; it might be discontent over failure in his
career. When the espionage service finds what that weakness is,
they can often turn it into a trump in recruiting. But someone's
weak point might be one of his relatives. And this was the sort of
trump card that Bruce Hutchins sprang on Arthur at the Bell-
mansro Restaurant in the middle of May 1975. As Hutchins
began to make the decisive move, Arthur felt a cold chill creep-
ing up his spine.
Calmly and in great detail, Hutchins told Arthur how much
"the Company" already knew about him. This included a great
deal about his personal finances and family background, and
many of the details were so exact that Arthur himself could
hardly have given a more complete description. When Arthur
asked how the hell Bruce had gotten to know so much about
him, Bruce answered that in the Company they knew their jobs,
knew when they were looking at the right man, and left nothing
to chance. Even this was an elementary psychological trick,
used by nearly every espionage service. Then, after a while,
Bruce got to the point.
He spoke of Arthur's relatives in Africa, and about those the
Company had located. And suddenly, as if in passing, he told
Arthur how the authorities of an East African country had ar-
rested his cousin "C" only days before. At the moment the
cousin was being tortured, Bruce added, and, with pretended
nonchalance, "Well, you know yourself how things happen
down there.
"And so you see, Arthur, here's an example of how I can
scratch your back. If you join with the Company and cooperate
with me, we'll see to it that this fellow down there is immedi-
ately freed. Okay?"
Arthur felt that he was about to be trapped. What had started
as a playful idea for an article about which Arthur had often
joked with Kim and Roger — "What the hell do they think, that
I'm going to become a traitor just for some whiskey?" — had
become serious business. There he is, knowing that one of his
close relatives is being tortured while he sits at a restaurant in a
foreign country, and across the table someone asks if he would
like the torture stopped.
Goodbye Bruce Hutchins
219
Arthur agreed to join the Company. Certainly he intended to
play the game as long as his cousin was under arrest, and he
definitely intended to write the article. But even if Hutchins had
any idea of Arthur's intentions — to play along only as long as his
cousin was being tortured — it would hardly have mattered. Once
involved in working for an espionage service, leaving is never
that easy.
Once Arthur had definitely agreed to cooperate, Hutchins
gave him the first basic lesson. From his briefcase, he produced
a set of photos — black-and-white portraits taken with a tele-
photo lens. They showed the most important officers on the staff
of the Russian Embassy in Stockholm, all members of the Soviet
intelligence service, the KGB. Bruce pointed to the photos and
gave the names one by one: Georgij Motchalov, embassy coun-
selor and the KGB chief in Sweden; Anatolij Semenov, second
secretary; Nicolai Kozotkikh, second secretary; Rudolf Bak-
ushev, second secretary; and third secretary Sergei Chobni-
akov.
For a newly recruited CIA agent, the lesson — going through
the local KGB gallery — might seem a little strange. But Bruce
explained. From now on Arthur would be spending a lot of time
with the diplomats in Stockholm, and as a result, he would come
across people from the KGB. And as they too were skilled re-
cruiters . . .
"You see, we don't want any kind of ping-pong between us
and them," Bruce warned, "so stay away from these people
from now on."
And so, the recruiting phase of this routine CIA operation was
finished. Bruce had been through it dozens of times before, and
without any failures. A shark, he had swum about in Helsinki
and Stockholm for several years, never failing with his victims.
But this time he had Arthur Opot in his jaws. And that was the
beginning of the biggest blunder the CIA had ever committed in
Sweden, a disastrous "flap," as the CIA euphemistically calls it
when something goes completely haywire.
But who is Arthur Opot? And what had made him such an
excellent target for CIA recruiting in Sweden? The answer is
surprisingly simple. Arthur was perfect for one of the CIA's
permanent operations in Sweden — infiltrating the African em-
bassies and recruiting agents among the African residents.
Arthur Opot is 27 years old, a citizen of Kenya, and a free-
lance journalist in the foreign broadcasting service of Radio
Sweden. Journalism, as a rule, is one of the best ' 'covers' ' f or an
220
Jan Guillou and Roger Wallis
agent. Journalists can show up anywhere and continually ask
questions about almost everything — all without causing suspi-
cion. More specifically, though, the African colony in Stock-
holm is rather small and hard to penetrate. There are only 50
Africans working in the embassies in Stockholm, and for the
most part they tend to stick together. Arthur Opot, however,
often spent time with the diplomats, as did other Africans in
Stockholm. According to the CIA's preliminary assessment, this
made Arthur an excellent access agent — a middle link for more
important recruiting operations among the diplomats. With fur-
ther investigation, the CIA also learned that Arthur is married to
a Swedish woman who is a member of both the Swedish-Tanza-
nian Friendship Association and a small leftish company called
"Trade-Front," which specializes in importing consumer goods
from China, Vietnam, Tanzania, and North Korea. So Arthur's
cover must have seemed nearly perfect. The CIA then investi-
gated Arthur's finances and drinking habits, and later, when
Bruce boasted of how much the Company knew about Arthur, it
became clear that they had carried their investigation rather far
even before the first contact with him. Where their information
came from is impossible to prove. But Arthur, as well as his wife
Bibi, seem convinced that a lot of personal information had
come from an African diplomat who has now left Stockholm,
but who had clearly cooperated intimately with Bruce Hutchins.
For Bruce, everything seemed to have turned out as expected.
Arthur appeared recruited. All that remained now was to make
sure that the tortured cousin was released, and gradually
Arthur's objections would be swept away with money and with
the fact that he was already working for the Company. But, for
once, Bruce and the other CIA officers at the station in Stock-
holm had made a blunder. A massive blunder. Arthur had no
intention of becoming a servant of the CIA.
The question — as interesting as it is hard to answer — is how
the CIA people in Stockholm could make such a disastrous mis-
judgment. A possible answer, one that has occurred to us sev-
eral times while working on this report, is a point made by a
KGB defector this January on a TV-2 program about the KGB.
As he saw it, the KGB generally believed that the CIA suffers
from a much too simplified, one-dimensional view of people.
When the CIA makes a personal investigation, they concentrate
primarily on the victim's drinking and sexual habits, and also on
his financial needs and his attitude toward world communism.
Goodbye Bruce Hut chins
221
Anyone who is anti-communist, who likes whiskey and beautiful
women, and who also lacks money would — in this simplified
view — almost certainly accept CIA recruitment. According to
the Russian defector, the KGB would make a greater effort to
find out about the victim's psychology and subjective feelings
about himself. What never occurred to Bruce Hutchins was that
Arthur Opot found it completely inconceivable to become a trai-
tor, to sell his own people to the American espionage agency.
One needn't be a "Communist" to come to such a simple stand-
point. But this apparently never occurred to Hutchins.
After the decisive meeting in May at the Bellmansro Restau-
rant, when Bruce had threatened Arthur with the continued tor-
ture of his cousin in Africa, forcing Arthur to agree to work for
the Company, Arthur Opot went directly back to his friends at
Radio Sweden and told them just how serious the game had
become.
The three discussed the situation and soon came to the same
conclusion as would any journalist under the same circumstan-
ces. They would write the article and they would really expose
the CIA. Arthur would pretend to join the CIA and see what
happened. He would not, however, give any significant informa-
tion to Bruce. On the contrary, they agreed that Arthur would
give false answers to Bruce's questions. And so they would see
how long their masquerade could last.
Once this was decided, things moved ahead rapidly. Bruce
now acted as if the recruiting was over; the only thing to do was
to define Arthur's work and goals, and to arrange certain very
poor security measures. For future meetings, they chose four
places: in order of preference, "The Tree" at the railway station
in Stocksund; "The Restaurant" at number 50 Strindbergsgatan
in the Gardet section of Stockholm; "The Hotel" at the Esplan-
ade cinema; and "The Farm," Bruce Hutchins' home at number
37 Riddarvagen in Lidingd. ("The Farm" is CIA slang for the
Camp Peary training base in Virginia — code name ISOLA-
TION.) Arthur's code name would be LASSE, and if he wanted
to initiate an unscheduled meeting he was to call Bruce at the
Embassy (telephone 63-05-20, extension 244; or, directly,
63-05-21), introduce himself as LASSE, and mention a time,
which would be for a meeting at "The Restaurant." Bruce never
suggested any further security measures, except to warn Arthur
never to mention to anyone, not even to Bibi, his wife, that
Bruce and he worked together.
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Jan Guillou and Roger Wallis
It was already June 1975, and the work Bruce started to spell
out almost exclusively focused on African diplomats and the
Chinese diplomat whom the CIA thought a potential defector —
the second secretary Cheng Yueh, who works on cultural af-
fairs. (According to the CIA, Cheng also does other, more im-
portant work.) If Arthur could help the present operation to get
Cheng to defect, he would be paid hundreds of thousands of
kronor (tens of thousands of dollars).
To improve his contacts with the Chinese Embassy, Arthur
was to use his existing contacts at the Tanzanian Embassy. This
would bring invitations to the kinds of parties the Chinese diplo-
mats attend. Another key task was to try to get confirmation
from the Somalian diplomats in Stockholm on whether or not the
Soviet Union had established a naval base in Somalia — a ques-
tion widely discussed at the time. In addition, Bruce wanted
personal information on most of the African diplomats in Stock-
holm. Arthur started to deliver falsified information, and plenty
of it. His main, and very simple, rule: Tell Bruce exactly the
opposite of what was really true.
Soon Bruce tells Arthur that his cousin "C" has been re-
leased. Arthur makes some rather expensive telephone calls to
Africa to confirm that "C" had been arrested for unknown rea-
sons, that he had been badly tortured,, and that, for reasons
unknown, he had now been released. Bruce points out that the
Company can easily arrange for "C," or any other of Arthur's
relatives, to get the same treatment again, if Arthur refuses to
continue cooperating. "This is not meant to be a threat, but just
to let you know," Bruce explains.
It was now summer. Arthur and his two colleagues, Roger and
Kim, decided that it was time to bring a newspaper into the
project before it went any further. They discussed the question
and then approached the big daily newspaper Dagens Nyheter.
But the editors weren't interested in exposing the CIA. The next
choice was Folket i Bild, and the present collaboration began.
Arthur continued to give Bruce false information. But now
Arthur had a whole team of reporters with whom he could dis-
cuss his assignments. For the most part, Bruce's questions still
concerned personal information on various African diplomats.
To help Arthur establish contact with the potential defector at
the Chinese Embassy, Bruce suggested that Arthur arrange for
some Chinese recordings to be played on the foreign broadcasts.
Later that autumn, Arthur also got a document said to come
from the Angolan liberation movement FNLA, but probably
Goodbye Bruce Hutchins
223
falsified by the CIA. Bruce instructed Arthur to take the docu-
ment to the Chinese Embassy, pretending that he had gotten it
from a foreign journalist and had thought it might be of interest.
In this way he was to try to promote discussion on the FNLA
and see if he could discover any signs of change in the Chinese
attitude toward the MPLA-FNLA conflict in Angola. Generally,
he was to try to improve his personal relations with the Chinese.
On one occasion, Bruce took Arthur to his home ("The
Farm") and lectured him on the Company and its work. For the
most part, Bruce talked about democracy and how to defend it.
"We in the Company fight against ideologies," he explained.
The Company was going to save the world from communism,
and would have succeeded already if they didn't have to deal
with incompetent politicians — senators and congressmen — who
were always throwing monkey wrenches into the works. Politi-
cians didn't have the complete information that the Company
had, and as a result, they often made deeply undemocratic deci-
sions — that is, decisions harmful to democracy. Thus it was a
real honor to fight alongside the Company, and the Company
compensated those who helped very well indeed.
On the other hand, Arthur should never try to fool around
with the Company. That could result in death. Besides, he would
soon be taking a polygraph test, a routine for every agent, even
the career CIA officers. (Polygraph, an advanced lie detector the
CIA uses, is a machine which simultaneously measures blood
pressure, heartbeat, and sweat on the palms.)
The rest of the conversation was devoted to the potential
Chinese defector and the situation in Africa. Bruce told Arthur
that a coup d 'etat would soon take place in Nigeria (a coup that
later did take place), and also that the Company was preparing a
coup in Somalia (where, to our knowledge, no coup attempt has
happened so far). Arthur was to try to get further personal infor-
mation on the Somalian diplomats in Stockholm.
On Wednesday, September 3, Bruce picked Arthur up in front
of Radio Sweden and instructed Arthur to arrange some parties
for African diplomats that fall. Bruce had a list of those to be
invited — some 30 people connected with various African embas-
sies in Stockholm, mostly from Zaire, Zambia, and Tanzania.
The guests all had some link with the political sections of the
embassies — or with the coding departments. (Every embassy
has a department that works on coding secret political messages
to the home country.)
Bruce would also be invited to the party, along with some ten
224
Jan Guillou and Roger Wallis
others — it made no difference whom — to create a politically less
homogeneous gathering. The chief purpose of the project seems
to have been to give Bruce a chance to make personal contact
with those diplomats in Sweden who were the CIA's target
group. Of course, Bruce picked up the tab for food and whiskey.
Months later, on November 22, a similar event was arranged,
and after both parties Bruce and Arthur met for several days to
assess those who had attended.
On September 19, Bruce first raised the possibility that the
CIA would send Arthur to Angola. According to the initial plan,
Arthur would go as a journalist to FNLA-controlled areas to
collect material for newspaper articles which could be worked
on and "improved" by the CIA office when he returned to
Stockholm. Then, with the help of CIA contacts, the prepared
articles would be published in convenient Swedish newspapers.
The aim of the operation was to show the Soviet-supported lib-
eration movement, the MPL A, in as bad a light as possible.
As it turned out the actual trip took place under completely
different circumstances. This was because of what Hutchins
called "the catastrophe," namely, the decision of the American
Congress not to allocate to their government the needed re-
sources for full-scale intervention in the ongoing Angolan war.
Bruce called this a catastrophe since the decision, made as usual
by dumb politicians, left Angola "wide open" for a Soviet-Com-
munist takeover.
With the changed situation, Arthur was now to go to MPLA-
controlled areas, primarily Luanda, to collect political and mili-
tary intelligence on the MPLA government. If one studies the
list of questions given to Arthur (see page 234), it is possible to
see almost exactly how the CIA assessed the Angolan situation
at the time, both politically and militarily. Moreover, the ques-
tions are so demanding that no one, no matter how skilled, could
have compiled complete answers in a single trip to Luanda. In
fact, the questions the CIA wanted answered would require the
simultaneous efforts of several different agents.
It might seem surprising that the CIA would send an agent like
Arthur Opot on such an exacting and dangerous mission (where
discovery would mean death). But apparently, in contrast to
several other agents, Arthur had a perfect cover. He was a jour-
nalist from Radio Sweden. Besides, at the time Angola was
clearly the CIA's top priority; they were sending abroad all their
available agents. The CIA's purpose was, presumably, to collect
as much information as rapidly as possible to prove that Angola
Goodbye Bruce Hut chins
225
was about to become a Soviet colony (unless the "free world' '
intervened in time).
As Arthur's team of reporters now saw the situation , it was all
becoming a bit sticky. Clearly, the "report" Arthur would de-
liver when he returned to Stockholm would not make any CIA
chief very happy, and this coming fiasco would make it impossi-
ble to continue the comedy. So, after discussing the problem, we
decided to break off the masquerade as soon as we could and to
publish what we had. This gave us a splendid chance to check on
the CIA's relationship with the Swedish Secret Service (SAPO).
Arthur and Bruce met again on December 30, and Arthur
received some 12,000 kronor ($3,000) and a form with the ques-
tions to be answered. He was previously required to fill out a
routine form before receiving any major mission, the PRQ (Per-
sonal Record Questionnaire). No one can be used for any CIA
operational assignment until one is approved by the Operational
Approval Branch of the CIA 's Counter-intelligence Staff in the
United States. Arthur appears to have passed the security check
without any problem. He could now be sent on his first mission
to Luanda, Angola. The comedy had really gone too far.
We thought it would be a simple thing to get Arthur sacked
from the CIA. We knew that his Angola "report" would contain
falsified information and a load of distorted, albeit plausible,
rubbish, which we would concoct. In addition, we arranged a
telephone call that we thought would surely get Arthur sacked in
a second.
Arthur's wife Bibi, who had known about the project all
along, simply called Bruce Hutchins a few days after Arthur's
departure. She made the call to the American Embassy and said
that she wanted to speak with Bruce Hutchins. She told him her
name and said that Arthur had lost his money in Angola. And,
she insisted, since he was in Angola on a CIA mission, the CIA
had to find a way to get him more money. Bruce first told Bibi
that it wasn't possible. Then, later on, he called her back and
asked for a meeting.
Note the following details: The wife of an agent telephones
directly to the Embassy. She gives her name. She asks to talk to
a named person. She gives the name of a CIA agent who's
somewhere in the world on a mission. She points out that the
CIA had paid for the mission. She demands more money.
Bruce doesn't deny any of it. He simply says that it's impossi-
ble and then asks for a meeting.
Every embassy telephone is tapped by the Swedish Intelli-
226
Jan Guillou and Roger Wallis
gence Service. A single call to Georgij Motchalov or one of his
colleagues on the KGB staff at the Soviet Embassy would bring
immediate and drastic consequences. Within 24 hours, the KGB
officer would have left Sweden and all further contacts with the
agent or his wife would immediately be terminated.
Where the CIA is concerned, however, things don't work that
way. Instead, Bruce went out, telephoned Bibi Opot, and ar-
ranged to see her the following evening, January 8, in the bar of
Stockholm's Grand Hotel. Bruce orders some whiskey and pro-
ceeds to threaten Bibi with death. He tells her how extremely
dangerous it would be if someone learned what he or Arthur
were doing. In particular, he wanted her to know that Bruce
Hutchins is living a life where any day he could return from
work to find a murderer hiding in his house. And now Bibi Opot
could end up in the same situation. . . .
That is, unless they were able to work the whole thing out in a
better way. Namely, Bibi would also start working for the Com-
pany. To the Company, $10,000 was worth no more than a
nickel, especially when it concerned operations among the
Chinese in Stockholm. A Chinese defector, or valuable informa-
tion from inside the Chinese Embassy, would be well compen-
sated. Since Bibi was working at the "Trade-Front," she could
easily establish good relations with the Chinese. All in all, there
were superb possibilities for future cooperation.
Bruce then gave Bibi 1,300 kronor (about $350), the money
Arthur would need to support himself during his stay in Luanda.
Bruce also began to talk about politics, and as usual his tongue
loosened in direct relation to the quantity of alcohol he con-
sumed. He talked a lot about the "Cuban crisis," which led him
to the subject of Kennedy. He himself was a Kennedy man, he
said, and pointed out to Bibi that Kennedy had fought for de-
mocracy, justice, and human rights.
A few days later, Arthur returned after completely failing in
Angola. Bruce rented room 561 at the Sheraton Hotel; using a
false name, and for two days (January 12-13) questioned Arthur,
who only gave him false or distorted information.
By this time, Arthur must have appeared to be the most use-
less agent the CIA had ever had. Extraordinarily, however,
Bruce continued to demand more information. They had already
met about 20 times since spring, and throughout the time Arthur
had done nothing but arrange two parties and dish out several
confused personal descriptions. And now the trip to Angola,
Goodbye Bruce Hutch ins
227
which turned out to be a double failure. First, it proved Arthur
had mentioned his activities to an uninvolved outsider, who had,
on top of that, eventually telephoned the Embassy and allowed
the Swedish Intelligence Service to tape-record everything. Sec-
ond, Arthur failed to carry out a single task in Angola.
But, for all of this, Bruce gave Arthur another delicate mis-
sion — to return to Angola and to fail once again. We discussed
this on the reporting team, and it seemed most unlikely that the
trip was some kind of trap. If Bruce really was suspicious, he
certainly wouldn't have given Arthur the document which de-
fined the tasks for the second trip. The document exposed Bruce
too heavily. It even asked for information about two Swedish
journalists in Angola, making Bruce guilty of espionage — some-
thing far more serious than his earlier offense of unauthorized
intelligence activity.
Arthur made up his mind to go to Angola a second time. The
advantage was that we could now find out if it was possible to be
sacked by the CIA for incompetence. It would also give us more
time to work on the article without making Bruce Hutchins
suspicious.
Bruce Hutchins is protected from the law because of his diplo-
matic immunity. If he had been a so-called deep-cover agent — a
CIA officer working under a non-diplomatic cover, as for exam-
ple an airline representative — he would have been taken to court
in Sweden. The offenses would have been blackmail (a maxi-
mum of 6 years in prison); unauthorized intelligence activity
(attempts to collect information about other foreign diplomats, a
maximum of 2 years); and possibly illegal threat (a maximum of
2 years) and espionage (a maximum of 6 years). If Bruce Hutch-
ins is still in Sweden when this article is published, he will be
deemed "persona non grata" by the Swedish Foreign Office.
And, if that happens, Bruce Hutchins will become the first
American diplomat ever to be deported from Sweden.
Bruce Hutchins is one of about ten CIA officers in the Ameri-
can Embassy in Stockholm. He's in his forties and has probably
never had any other job. This means that he was recruited in the
most common way, directly from an American university. It
also means that he must have done quite well at the university.
No doubt history and political science were among Bruce
Hutchins' areas of specialization.
It's hard to get an exact picture of the qualities that make a
228
Jan Guillou and Roger Wallis
young American student join the CIA. The long testing program
is so hard that almost 99% of the applicants are sifted out. The
CIA security check takes about six months (no "Communist"
relatives, no close relatives in Eastern Europe, no sensational
sexual perversions, etc.).
Generally, it can be assumed that those accepted into CIA
service have afar above average intellectual capacity, a remark-
able interest in politics, good physical fitness, a strong desire to
hold on to their own positions, and a desire to participate in
creating politics. The training takes several years and includes
technical aspects (radio operation, bugging, codes, photogra-
phy, letter-opening, etc.) as well as special military training and
political education, where the courses concentrate on the struc-
ture and organization of Communist parties and/or intensive po-
litical studies of the country where the applicant will first be
posted. Bruce Hutchins has previously been stationed in Mos-
cow, where the working conditions certainly are radically differ-
ent from those in Sweden. Before coming to Sweden in 1972, he
also had spent several years in Helsinki, working primarily on
infiltrating and trying to influence every political force with any
connection to the Soviet Union, which in Finland is a big job.
In Stockholm, Hutchins' main work is to infiltrate the diplo-
matic missions of the Third World and also to gather information
on the Swedish government's relationship with Third World
countries.
Like those of other intelligence agencies, the CIA's activities
are strictly "compartmentalized." This means that each em-
ployee has to maintain his special work and place on the team,
just like a disciplined football player. Only the head of the CIA
station should have an overview of all of the operations in a
particular place. The purpose of this compartmentalization is
obviously to minimize the damage in the event of what the CIA
calls a "flap," such as this article will cause for Bruce Hutchins
and the CIA. A single defector or exposed CIA officer should
never be able to expose the entire local CIA operation.
Bruce Hutchins' methods of work in Stockholm show several
surprising features. He and the other CIA officers can often be
seen in Stockholm's bars and restaurants, and their favorite spot
is the English Tudor Arms pub on Grevgatan in Stockholm.
Ironically, the Tudor Arms also used to be the favorite of agents
of the Swedish Intelligence Service's Information Bureau. The
CIA also has permanently rented rooms at the American Shera-
ton Hotel, which they chiefly use to meet with agents.
Goodbye Bruce Hutchins
229
Most remarkably, Hutchins and some of his colleagues act
rather openly as members of the CIA. When playing darts, they
carry on their conversation in internal CIA slang, which any
security officer or foreign intelligence agent would immediately
recognize.
Hutchins is well known at the Tudor Arms as a bad loser at
darts. But if he wins, he suddenly buys a round. His consump-
tion of alcohol is enormously high. His favorite drink is a "Rob
Roy" (whiskey and red vermouth).
On Wednesday, January 7, one of the members of the report-
ing team from FIB-Kulturfront went to the Tudor Arms to wait
for Hutchins. Only hours before, he had gotten the dramatic
telephone call from Bibi Opot telling him that his agent in Angola
was about to turn into a "flap, " and we were interested in how
he was reacting.
Hutchins got to the Tudor Arms about 6:00 p.m. and immedi-
ately started a four-hour-long game of darts, constantly drinking
Rob Roys. When he won a game, he bought drinks for everyone
around. When he lost, he swore and threw the darts on the floor.
After four hours of loud-mouthed buffoonery, Hutchins invited
several people — including the FIB-Kulturfront reporter! — to the
Ostermalmskallaren Restaurant, where the doorman refused to
let him in because he was too drunk. However, the FIB reporter
managed to get them by the doorman by showing his press card.
And so the drinking went on, all on the CIA's expense account.
The night ended at 2:00 a.m. with Hutchins staggering to his car,
which was parked outside the Alexandra night club. By that time
he'd been drinking at bars and restaurants for nine hours. Stand-
ing by the car were two uniformed policemen, who asked in
surprise if Hutchins really intended to take the car.
"Don't you worry, this is my car," slurped the CIA man.
Hutchins continued to argue with the policemen for some
time, but they couldn't arrest him since he had identified himself
as a diplomat. Hutchins tried to provoke the policemen into
taking his car keys by force. Finally, the incident ended with
Hutchins voluntarily giving them the keys, taking a taxi to his
home in Lidingo, returning to the scene of the crime, and — still
drunk — driving his car home. Hutchins regularly drives while
drunk.
The huge consumption of liquor is inevitably part of CIA
work. (A CIA man hardly pays for such expenses out of his own
pocket; in Hutchins' case the expenses probably reached some
5,000 kronor [about $1,200] a month.) Contacts are made in
230
Jan Guillou and Roger Wallis
restaurants and every intelligence agency lives off its contacts.
Besides, money and his standard of living play a big part in
measuring success for a CIA man. For example, when Bruce
and his wife.Lou Ann go out for the evening, the children — aged
six and four — are supposed to look after one another. And they
get paid for it: the older child gets 3 kronor ($1) an hour, the
younger lV2(50f ).
The importance of such behavior is not on the level of per-
sonal morality, of course. An intelligence officer should be
trained to take minimal risks when he's at work. So, at the very
least, it's remarkable that a CIA man in Stockholm can behave
as Hutchins does. Even a small automobile accident when he's
intoxicated could lead to a flap. A diplomat would then risk
being removed from the country, and if he's a CIA officer, he
would leave a lot of agents and informants without their "case
officer." In addition, letting it be known publicly that he works
for an intelligence agency would be against all rules and regula-
tions. So the self-assured nonchalance that Hutchins shows, as
when he threatened Arthur Opot's wife with death the day after
his night out on the town, might seem a bit confusing.
The explanation of this extreme nonchalance and breaking of
every kind of security regulation must be the favorable "opera-
tional climate" in Sweden.
The Swedish Secret Service have never bothered to pursue a
CIA man. SAPO chases only Eastern European diplomats and
the organized Swedish left. From a CIA point of view, SAPO is
an ally that would never get in the way of any CIA operation.
The CIA can behave as if Stockholm were its own backyard, and
as if there weren't any risks at all. The Soviet KGB are probably
green with envy.
The entire top floor of the American Embassy in Stockholm is
the CIA's "operations center" in Sweden. From here, the CIA
runs the hundreds of informers and agents who operate in Swed-
ish society. The CIA's most important so-called operational tar-
gets in Sweden are the Foreign Office and mass media, Swedish
foreign aid policy, Third World embassies, and Eastern Euro-
pean agents.
The CIA is the world's second largest intelligence agency,
after the Soviet intelligence and security service, the KGB,
which is more than ten times as big. (When making comparisons,
it should be pointed out that the major part of KGB resources
are spent on the control of citizens within the Soviet Union.)
Goodbye Bruce Hutchins
231
Information differs on the total budget of the CIA, but the most
recent figure reaches some 50 billion Swedish kronor (about $10
billion), a sum corresponding to five times the total Swedish
defense budget! The CIA has at least 15,000 employees, plus
hundreds of thousands of informers and so-called agents all over
the world.
Through the flood of memoirs written by ex-CIA employees
and the various investigations made over the past few years by
the American Congress, a great deal is now known of CIA oper-
ations in international politics, primarily in Indochina.
However, almost nothing has been published about CIA oper-
ations in Sweden. We can assume, nonetheless, that CIA activi-
ties here are far more extensive than in most other countries of
the world. In most American embassies, CIA employees do not
make up more than 20% of the total staff. In Sweden, as many as
one third of the embassy staff are employed by the CIA.
Pure military espionage gets a very low priority at the CIA
station in Stockholm. This is because the Swedish armed forces
are so intimately linked with the American arms industry that
the American intelligence service automatically gets a huge
amount of information without any kind of effort. In addition,
the Swedish Intelligence Service has for years been one of the
CIA's allies, and will remain so in the future, as was demon-
strated by the "Intelligence Investigation Report/' This report
proposed that the enlarged Swedish Intelligence Service have its
staff trained by foreign intelligence agencies, and as there is no
likely alternative to the CIA, our future IB officials will be even
more intimately linked to the CIA than at present. Moreover,
since the CIA continually tries to recruit agents from among
officials of foreign intelligence agencies, it is plausible to assume
that a certain part of the future Swedish intelligence staff will be
found on the CIA payroll.
The head of the Swedish Secret Service, Hans Holmer, has
publicly admitted that his agency also cooperates with the CIA,
which gives a fairly clear picture of the operational climate in
Sweden. This operational climate is an assessment of the possi-
bilities of activity in a particular country and is the basis of all
CIA work. The CIA's first question: What is the attitude of the
local security service toward us? The second: What is the atti-
tude of the local intelligence agency toward us? And only then,
in the third question, does the CIA even begin to ask about the
attitude of the local government. From a CIA point of view, the
232
Jan Guillou and Roger Wallis
working conditions in Sweden are just as good as those in, for
example, West Germany. The Swedish security service has
never bothered the CIA. Nor has the press posed any problem.
The CIA's espionage activities in Sweden are concentrated
almost exclusively on political and economic information. There
are, however, two totally separated target areas. One is foreign
embassies and intelligence agencies, the other is Swedish life.
As in any other country, the CIA in Sweden naturally directs
operations against the Soviet Union and its allies, and also
against China. But in Stockholm, the CIA's attitude toward the
Soviet KGB is characterized by a curious ambiguity. In part,
this is because Stockholm acts as an international way station
for espionage. Stockholm is neutral ground, a place where intel-
ligence officials meet to exchange agents and the like. Examples
of this are often quite comical. The head of the Swedish CIA
station, Paul Garbler, meets at his home (Elfviksvagen 44, Li-
dingo) with all sorts of Swedish people and international delega-
tions. One night it might be a group from a ministry or a trade
union, the next a group of West German intelligence officers.
But, occasionally, he also has visitors from the KGB. And there
is only one visible difference between the KGB visits and those
of other groups. After every KGB visit, technical experts from
the American Embassy search the house with special instru-
ments to ferret out possible hidden microphones.
About six months ago, the CIA's James Skove happened to
attend the same class in Swedish as a KGB officer named Vladi-
mir. They both found the coincidence amusing and often went to
the Tudor Arms to drink beer together after class.
Of course, the other side of the relationship between the CIA
and KGB and the KGB's allies (mainly the Czech and East
German organizations) is much more conventional. As every-
where else in the world, both sides work at recruiting each oth-
er's agents and infiltrating each other's embassies.
Undoubtedly, CIA espionage against Third World embassies
in Stockholm is of the highest priority. In terms of international
politics, Sweden is a key country, and the CIA continuously
gathers information on coming Swedish political initiatives in
relation to the Third World. Among others at the CIA station in
Stockholm, George D. Swerdlin gathers information and plans
disruption of Sweden's program of development aid. From dip-
lomatic sources whom we have promised not to reveal, we have
obtained thorough descriptions of how Swerdlin has tried to find
proof that Sweden links its development aid to political de-
Goodbye Bruce Hutcliins
233
mands. This has surprised African diplomats, since Swerdlin
appears to believe that Sweden uses its development aid in the
same manner as would a superpower — that is, as a means of
political pressure.
But Swerdlin also plans disruptive actions against Swedish
development aid. He does this by preparing a base for American
or American-influenced "countercontributions" and for politi-
cal resistance in Sweden against certain targets for Swedish aid,
such as Vietnam and Cuba.
In dealing with Sweden and the Third World, operational ac-
tivities at the CIA station fall into several different target areas.
The Foreign Office is one of the mcst important Swedish targets,
and there is no doubt that the CIA can get hold of secret infor-
mation from the FO. The latest example was the CIA's proven
knowledge of the Palestine Liberation Organization's plans to
establish an information office in Stockholm. The CIA was
aware of these plans long before they became public, and the
American Ambassador in Stockholm was able to express his
discontent with the Swedish government.
As it happens, the CIA's Bruce Hutchins dealt precisely with
this matter. One of the top officials to deal with Arab questions
in the Swedish Foreign Office is married to a woman who has
enjoyed a long and intimate relationship with Hutchins. The
woman and Hutchins meet regularly in Stockholm, though theirs
is not a personal relationship.
Besides the Foreign Office, another key operational target for
CIA infiltration is Radio Sweden. And, since the initial plan for
Arthur Opot's trip to Angola involved publishing propaganda
with the help of a network of CIA contacts, it's clear that the
CIA has on its payroll Swedish journalists of some influence.
This is hardly surprising, since an ongoing mission of every CIA
station is to establish such contacts. The system of contacts has
a double purpose. On the one hand, journalists work in a milieu
where the flow of information is intense and therefore they can
become superb informers. On the other hand, journalists em-
ployed by the CIA can easily create the desired propaganda.
Our description of what the CIA does in Sweden is necessarily
fragmentary and incomplete. Obviously, we have had sources of
information other than Arthur Opot's masquerade. And the need
to keep these sources anonymous — a precondition for getting
information from diplomatic sources — has made our description
less precise than we would have liked.
Finally, it's important to emphasize the obvious. There are 10
234
Jan Guillou and Roger Wallis
to IS CIA men at the Embassy in Stockholm. If we assume that
each of them handles at least 10 local "agents," we get an ap-
proximate measure of the extent of CIA activities in Sweden. In
other words, for all its detail, this article has probably not de-
scribed more than 1% of CIA activity in Sweden.
The Documents Given to Arthur Opot
(Reproduced exactly as they were typed)
[First Document]
1 . Regarding the OAU meetings: What are the MPLA/
Soviet/Cuban behind-the-scenes efforts to persuade
delegates to recognize the MPLA government in An-
gola? What specifically is the MPLA doing to put forth
charges of South African intervention in Angola and to
minimize counter-charges of Soviet and Cuban sup-
port to MPLA? Of particular interest are MPLA action
plans for OAU meetings. What sort of contingency
plans does MPLA have should efforts at the OAU fail
(in other words, what would be the MPLA reaction if
the OAU decides to send a peace-keeping force into
Angola?)? How would MPLA deal with international
pressure to permit FNLA and UN1TA participation in
an independent Angolan government?
2. There is a pressing need for confirmation and de-
tails on the reported arrival in Congo (Brazzaville)
and/or Angola of MIG-21 aircraft. According to some
reports, MIGs were delivered to Brazzaville in early
November, and press reports of 14 November quote
East European sources in Luanda as saying about 400
Soviets have arrived in Luanda for the purpose of
manning tanks and M IG-2 1 s in support of MPLA.
3. Information is needed on the control mechanisms
the MPLA government has instituted in Luanda (peo-
ple's vigilante groups, block committees, "poder pop-
ular" elements) that are used to keep vigilance over
the population and to control them — the same as in
Soviet bloc and Cuba and wherever and whenever
communist parties take control .
4. How many Soviet technical and military advisors
are there in Angola and Cabinda? What are their spe-
cialties and military ranks and where are they de-
Goodbye Bruce Hut chins
235
ployed? We would appreciate the names and ranks of
any high-level Soviet or bloc military officers.
5. What are the current MPLA military units, their
sizes, leaders and deployment? How large and how
well-armed is the MPLA force advancing on FNLA
headquarters in Ambriz? Latest information indicates
that this force is 80 kilometers south of Ambriz. How
many Soviets and Cubans are with this force? The
same information is needed on MPLA deployments in
the south and the east, particularly in Henrique de
Carvalho.
6. What is MPLA short-range political planning for
the post-civil war period? If MPLA should win An-
gola, how do they plan to deal with or relate to the pro-
FNLA Bakongo and the pro-UNITA Ovimbundu trib-
als? In this regard, are there any Bakongo or Ovim-
bundu tribals in the MPLA? If so, how many?
7. What are the MPLA's foreign policy plans? Does it
envision or wish to establish relations with known or
presumed supporters of FNLA and UNITA, including
Zaire, China and the U.S.? Would it reopen the Ben-
guela railroad to Zaire? What are its intentions toward
South Africa and support to liberation groups in Nam-
ibia and Rhodesia? What about relations with
Portugal?
8. There are indications of developing factionalism
within the MPLA (mulatto versus black) (moderate
versus radical) (Neto versus anti-Neto). How exten-
sive and significant is this factionalism? Identify those
in each faction — the strength of their following, their
points of view, their political orientation. There is par-
ticular interest in information about those who express
a willingness to negotiate a peaceful reconciliation and
the formation of a multiparty government. There is
also interest in any MPLA disenchantment with the
Soviets and Cubans and vice versa.
9. Since October, Cuban troops and advisors report-
edly have been transiting Pointe Noire, Congo, en
route to Angola and Cabinda. We need to know how
many Cubans are now in Angola proper, how many
are in Cabinda, how many more are coming and how
Jan Guillou and Roger Wallis
long they will all stay? How did or how do they travel
(plane? ship? direct from Cuba?)? What percentage of
the Cuban personnel are military and what branches
do they represent (army, navy, air)? What are their
specialties? Are any of them pilots and, if so, how
many and what will they fly? Provide details on the
amounts and types of military equipment they are
providing. Who proposed direct Cuban involvement
(the Cubans, Congolese, Soviets or MPLA)? Provide
the names of Cuban officers in Angola and Cabinda.
[Second Document ]
A. Any further information on the presence of MIG-
17 aircraft, such as when were they sent to Luanda
and how were they transported to Luanda? It would be
helpful if you can manage to see one of the MPLA
aircraft, to see for yourself what model it is. The MIG-
17 is a swept-wing aircraft and carries two external
fuel tanks, one under each wing. The MIG-21, on the
other hand, is a delta-wing jet fighter with a stream-
lined fuel tank carried under the central portion of the
aircraft. The MIG-21 also has a nosecone which ex-
tends forward through the round opening in the front
of the fuselage.
B. In addition to those questions given you earlier:
1. At the battle fronts: information on the
presence and activities of Cuban and Soviet
advisors and/or troops as well as the type and
quantity of weapons available at each front
visited. Also need the MPLA long-range battle
plans.
2. What are the MPLA intentions toward the
upcoming February OAU Council of Minis-
ters meeting in Addis Ababa? Especially, how
would MPLA use this meeting to further their
campaign for OAU recognition, particularly
now that so many OAU countries have recog-
nized the MPLA?
3. All possible information is needed on Coto
Cabral (bio data, date of birth, education,
etc.). What specifically is his position (title &
authority) in MPLA'? What specifically is his
Goodbye Bruce Hut chins
237
position as spokesman for the mulattos? As
the MPLA hierarchy is largely mulatto, it is
not clear how Cabral fits in as their
spokesman.
4. Gather background information on Leif
Biureborgh. Who employs him? Is he a busi-
nessman or paid by the MPLA or by the
Swedish government/Social Democratic par-
ty? Assessment of him is needed.
5. Who is the SR representative already
there, who is too conservative to be permitted
to visit the fronts? All info on his: bio,
assessment.
C. Details are needed on any support (money, mate-
riel, troops) to MPLA from African countries and pos-
sibly from Latin American countries. On December
29, the head of a three-man delegation travelling to
African and Latin American countries, Carvalho Dos
Santos, said during a press conference in Guyana that
countries which have promised military aid to the
MPLA are Nigeria, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau and the
Congo. According to Dos Santos, the aid would con-
sist of troops, equipment and guns.
D. We need evidence and details of any Soviet pres-
sure on MPLA to accept a compromise solution with
the FNLA and UNIT A, that is, a government of na-
tional unity with the MPLA taking the major power
role.
E. There is a recently-constructed Soviet radar sys-
tem in Luanda airport, about 200 meters south of the
airport control tower, mounted on the roof of a small
building. We are interested in the specific purpose of
the system, its effective range, the radio frequency/
frequencies on which it operates, the circumference/
diameter/depth (at the center) of the dish, a descrip-
tion of any attachments or projections from the dish
(length and width) and the Soviet name or designation
of the system.
F. A Soviet Kotlin Class guided missile destroyer, the
238
Jan Guillou and Roger Wallis
NAKHODCHIFYY, was observed northwest of
Pointe Noire, Congo, on 6 January, possibly en route
to Angola to join the landing ship transport which is
located off the Pointe Noire coast. We are interested in
Soviet plans for the NAKHODCHIFYY: Was it en
route to Pointe Noire and if so what was its mission? Is
the landing ship transport (1st) being actively used to
deliver Soviet Weapons to Pointe Noire for the
MPLA? If so, what weapons and in what quantities?
What deliveries are expected in the future and when?
G. What is the total cost of the Soviet Weapons sent
to Angola, including the cost of shipping and the cost
of transporting and maintaining Cuban troops and ma-
teriel in Angola. (If you get anything on this, please
indicate the period covered by your figures.)
What the Documents Tell Us
As far as we know, documents of this kind have never before
been published. One has only to look briefly at the questions to
realize that one of the central myths of modern espionage is
completely false. Satellites and other technical gadgetry have
not been able to replace the human agent out in the field. Satel-
lites can photograph large objects, but not political ideas.
The CIA's questions show precisely what modern espionage
really looks like. They show the gathering of both political and
military intelligence. To help create a base for the activities of
the American-backed wing of the OAU, it was important to have
information on what the MPLA would do at the OAU confer-
ence in Addis Ababa. In the event of an MPLA victory on the
battlefield, it was vital to have information on the internal situa-
tion within the MPLA. In making plans for the future in Angola,
it was important to know about the possible internal tendencies
in the MPLA that would back appeasement and a coalition
government.
At times, it's difficult to demarcate which is political informa-
tion and which is military. The CIA's urgent need to know
whether MIG-21s or MIG-17s had been stationed in Angola re-
lates to planning for a continuing war. The MIG-21 is a fighter
plane. If MIG-21s were in Angola, the MPLA and the Soviet
Union would be expecting a coming air war against hostile air-
craft. The MIG-17 is a tactical strike aircraft. If MIG-17s were
Goodbye Bruce Hutchins
239
there, they were probably intended for use against hostile ar-
mored columns on the ground.
Asking whether Cuban or Russian pilots were going to fly the
planes was important politically — in determining the degree of
direct Russian intervention.
The dispassionate tone of the questions comes from the fact
that this is a secret document and has nothing to do with public
propaganda. The questions also give a rather exact picture of
what the CIA really knew and did not know at the time. (In the
hands of the Russian intelligence agencies, the documents would
have been very valuable at the time. By now they are already
useless.)
Those who are interested in knowing how the CIA gradually
got answers to these questions should look through Newsweek
magazine during the month of January (1976). In the magazine,
it's possible to follow how one piece of the puzzle after another
fell into place. It's no secret that the information and analyses
on Angola published in Newsweek were those of the CIA.
Arthur Opot, the FIB-Kulturfront reporter inside the CIA,
had "failed" completely in giving sensible answers to any of
these questions. He also lost all his money and had to return to
Sweden without fulfilling his mission.
Finally, we should emphasize that the questions posed in the
documents are far too detailed and demanding for a single agent
to cover completely in a report. Agents are not supermen. On
the other hand, Arthur Opot was not the CIA's only envoy in
Angola. If we assume that 15 to 30 agents worked on the ques-
tions at the same time in Luanda in January, we get a picture of
how espionage really works. "The spy is looking for pieces to a
jigsaw puzzle," said the wartime slogan on Swedish match-
boxes. Or, rather, the spymaster and his computer fit the pieces
together.
The decision at CIA headquarters to send the totally inexperi-
enced Arthur Opot to Angola suggests that the question of An-
gola was of highest priority and that the CIA was using all avail-
able resources.
This conclusion is strengthened by the fact that Arthur, de-
spite his terrible "failure," was immediately sent back to An-
gola. For two days, on January 12 and 13, the CIA's Bruce
Hutchins questioned Arthur Opot in a rented hotel room (room
561, Sheraton Hotel) before giving up. After a severe dressing
down and withdrawal of a previous payment commitment,
240
Jan Guillou and Roger Wallis
Bruce Hutchins and his superior decided nevertheless to send
Arthur back to Angola! This certainly gives the impression that
the CIA regarded virtually any chance to obtain information
from Angola as extremely important.
The second spy mission to Angola was dramatically different
from the first. The CIA now appeared by some unknown means
to have obtained reports on Swedes who were in Angola. Our
man was therefore instructed to check on and to gather bio-
graphical, political, and economic information on them. And so
the CIA gave proof that they also practice espionage directly
against Swedish interests.
By this point, however, it had become impossible to carry on
the comedy any further. We were now racing against time:
Would we be able to publish this article before the CIA realized
that they had been taken?
Comparing the questions from the two missions, it's possible
to draw some immediate conclusions. By the second mission,
the level of difficulty has been decreased. This shouldn't be
surprising, since LASSE had "failed" completely on the first
mission. Moreover, some of the CIA's questions look like an
attempt to monitor what might have been negotiations between
the U.S. and the Soviet Union. Question "D" asks for proof of
Soviet pressure on the MPLA toward a compromise solution
over the heads of the Angolan people. This kind of monitoring is
typical of modern intelligence activity in the era of peaceful
coexistence. It is absolutely essential to know if the other side is
observing the rules that have been secretly negotiated, and only
the intelligence agencies can answer questions like that.
Of the military questions, "E" has particular interest. Satel-
lites and spy planes can certainly photograph a radar system, but
the photographs can't tell what kind of radar it is. If, for exam-
ple, the radar were connected to an air-defense missile system,
the consequence would be far different than in the case of ordi-
nary search radar.
Questions "B-4" and "B-5" have a very special character.
They suggest that the CIA had obtained information from other
sources on the two people in question. The Radio Sweden man
in Africa ("B-5") is Ingemar Odlander, who earlier held a mana-
gerial post on the news program "Report." The questions on
Odlander seem quite normal. Every espionage organization re-
gards journalists as "hot prospects," since journalists gather
information (often much more effectively than do "agents") and
also create an arena for political propaganda through their news
Goodbye Bruce Hutchins
241
reports. Almost every foreign correspondent has at least once
come across an "agent."
Sometime after these questions were asked, Ingemar Odlan-
der ran into some inexplicable difficulties with his work permit in
Kenya, which might have something to do with the CIA's inves-
tigation of him. If so, Odlander could proudly prove that the
CIA was unhappy with him. Whether or not they are, however,
is a question on which Folket i Bild can offer no definite opinion.
The CIA's interest in Leif Biureborgh is quite a different mat-
ter. Biureborgh holds down several different jobs in Angola.
Sometimes he pretends to "represent" the Swedish Social Dem-
ocratic Party. He is also a journalist (he has signed several
"heroic" articles during the last year) for the Social Democratic
press and at the same time runs some slightly unclear business
interests. Obviously, through their intelligence activity, the CIA
has gotten some preliminary knowledge about all of this. And
this has made Biureborgh a person worth investigating.
Hundreds of such routine investigations are made every year, on
possible Swedish agents, though without any concrete results.
Since Bruce Hutchins is protected by his diplomatic immun-
ity, the judicial aspects of the CIA's investigation about Swedish
citizens in Angola is only of theoretical interest. In general,
however, questions such as those in the second document impli-
cate the CIA in the crime of direct espionage against Swedish
interests. (From a security point of view, for example, even
Radio Sweden is a classified institution.)
Since Arthur Opot "failed" as an agent even on his second
mission, the relationship between him and his "case officer"
Bruce Hutchins began to get worse, to say the least. Arthur
returned to Sweden in February, and since the comedy with the
useless agent could hardly be carried any further, the reporting
team immediately started to finish the article. Up to the stage of
printing and publishing, Arthur prolonged his relationship with
Bruce Hutchins as far as possible. The question — still unan-
swered — was whether the CIA station in Stockholm would fi-
nally realize that there was something fishy about their "useless
agent." So, we don't know at present whether Bruce will still be
in Sweden when the article comes out. But if he is, there will
probably be something of a race between the CIA and the Swed-
ish Foreign Office. And then the question will be whether the
CIA will have time to recall Bruce Hutchins from Sweden be-
fore he gets thrown out.
242
Jan Guillou and Roger Wallis
Postscript
Just a few days before the article was finally published, the
CIA actually fired the "useless agent," Arthur Opot. Hutchins
gave Arthur a piece of paper on which to sign a promise that he
would never expose anything about his relationship with the
American government. Then he gave Arthur 1 ,700 kronor (about
$400) and a last warning that went something like this: "Re-
member one thing, Arthur. If anything comes out about our
relationship, it's your ass that's gonna fry, not mine."
Well, the article came out in early March, and it was Hutch-
ins' ass that fried, not Arthur's. The day after publication, Bruce
suddenly left Sweden, and the U.S. Embassy officially notified
the Swedish Foreign Office that he was gone, which was taken as
confirmation of Arthur Opot's story. It was also learned that
Hutchins' colleague, James Skove, had left the country a couple
of weeks earlier, and George Swerdlin was expected to leave as
well.
The Swedish Secret Service investigated the entire situation,
in part to see if they could bring any charges against Arthur and
the FIB-Kulturfront reporting team. Then, after three weeks,
the public prosecutor announced that he would bring no charges
against either the journalists or the diplomats, and the following
day, the Foreign Office formally notified the U.S. Embassy that
the Swedish government "strongly disapproved" of Hutchins'
activities in Stockholm — the strongest diplomatic protest that
Sweden had ever made in its relations with the United States.
On a more personal level, it also seems that Bruce Hutchins
might have pocketed for himself some of the money meant for
Arthur. No intelligence service would find it worthwhile to sign a
final contract with an agent and then give him the paltry sum of
$400 to terminate the relationship. Such a situation would de-
mand a sum at least ten times as big.
Mr. Hutchins will certainly have quite a lot to explain to his
superiors back in the United States.
[In regard to the reference to Somalia on page 223, there have in
fact been some very major changes in the foreign and domestic
policies of the Somalian government since this article was written,
though the leadership of the country has not changed hands. — Ed . ]
Conclusion
Introduction
What does it all mean? For the first time since the Bay of Pigs
fiasco, the Central Intelligence Agency has been put on the de-
fensive. Morale has plummeted. From the exposure of opera-
tions in the wake of the bloody coup in Chile to the widespread
revelations of case officers' identities described in this book, the
CIA has taken a beating.
But the Company is no ordinary organization. It commands
mind-boggling resources. It is constantly reorganizing and re-
grouping to stave off the curtailing of its powers. As we go to
press, the CIA is in a turmoil. Every day a new development is
in the works. The machinations of the current Director, Admiral
Stansfield Turner, are assailed from all directions, and President
Carter and Zbigniew Brzezinski's other colleagues from the Tri-
lateral Commission and NATO hover in the wings.
Through it all, Phil Agee has continued the struggle, being
buffeted from country to country: deported from England, de-
ported from France, deported from Germany, finally deported
243
244
Introduction
from the Netherlands. And every deportation is coupled simul-
taneously with sanctimonious but unbelievable denials from the
U.S. government of its lack of complicity. By now it seems the
government should realize that the counterattack against the
crimes of the CIA is not a one-man battle. The methods are
public knowledge; the means are simple; and the fight has just
begun.
In this section, Michael Getter's piece from the Washington
Post gives a flavor of the effect of exposures on the Agency ; Phil
Agee's lengthy Bicentennial contribution suggests long-range
plans; Phil Kelly describes the machinations behind Agee's
many deportations; and the CovertAction Information Bulletin
examines some of the many faces of the new Turner regime.
CIA Morale
Plummets
by Michael Getler
The publication of names of CIA employees overseas has
brought about a marked decline in the already low morale of
Agency personnel overseas.
Western intelligence officials in several overseas locations,
most of whom were still trying to ignore the CIA's tainted pub-
lic-image problems just a few months ago, now privately ac-
knowledge that there has been a sharp and dramatic drop in
morale in recent weeks. They say that it is affecting not only the
Agency's ability to gather intelligence but also that it is causing
severe personal strain as well.
"It's like Berlin right after the war," a veteran official said.
"You suddenly start driving with one eye on the rear-view mir-
ror; the nervous tension slips back into your life and you bring
all that home with you to the family at night. "
[This article first appeared in the January 16, 1976, issue of
the Washington Post: it appeared the next day in the Interna-
tional Herald Tribune, in Paris.]
245
246
Michael Getter
In recent weeks, interviews with a number of officials close to
the U.S. intelligence service disclosed that the year-long expose
of CIA wrongdoing in Congress and the press created serious
problems, not just in the office, but at home for an increasing
number of Agency workers.
The concerns most often mentioned were about teenage chil-
dren who now questioned how their fathers made a living and
why, even if they were not spies, they worked for the CIA.
That kind of problem, rarely discussed openly, has now been
heightened for many families with the publication of many
names of CIA employees, most of whom do not work as spies,
but who now feel somewhat threatened that an assassin or ter-
rorist will strike haphazardly at their families.
Under different circumstances, the publication of employee
names, and in some cases addresses, would be viewed with
concern but not alarm, sources say. It has, in fact, happened
before in some countries.
But the murder of CIA Station Chief Richard Welch in Athens
on Christmas Eve "has given rather dramatic proportions to this
thing. Publishing names is a very, very bad thing to be doing
now, it's becoming fashionable and it's going to generate an-
other murder," a senior official said.
The prediction that murders will follow is widely shared by
other intelligence officers.
"Nobody's panicked," said another veteran officer, "but the
thing is gnawing away at us. The impact is beginning to show.
The Congressional review, the whole hoopla for more than a
year now, was having a wearing-down effect. Now, rightly or
wrongly, there is the new element of danger due to Welch and
the publishing of names. There has been a quantum increase in
depression and concern and nobody seems able to help or to
stop what is undoubtedly ruining our ability to gather
intelligence."
"It certainly is unsettling, these names appearing in print,
coming after a long, hard struggle," another source said. "It's
like they are using the [congressional] assassination report al-
most as a backdrop to the attempts against us."
"The Agency has really been shattered," he adds. "We are
going to need a lot of forthright executive support to recover."
Where the CIA's most recent troubles will lead in terms of its
ability to operate overseas, is in doubt. Some officers feel that
the widespread disclosure of employee identities will almost cer-
CIA Morale Plummets
247
tainly serve to drive the Agency underground. "One can only
stop it by doing a better job of hiding CIA personnel," says an
officer. "But it is an enormous problem."
For one thing, the job of both providing and keeping up a good
cover, or hidden identity, takes an enormous amount of time,
several sources say, all of which takes away from the time an
agent can spend gathering intelligence. It will, in general,
weaken CIA abilities, they say.
Many of the veteran CIA employees are already known to
their counterparts around the world. In fact, officials acknowl-
edge that "Who's Who in the CIA" published in 1968 in East
Germany and compiled by Communist intelligence, identified
many of the old-timers well before the current rash of
disclosures.
But the chances are that new officers coming into the field will
be given much better cover, which will not allow them to be
picked so easily out of State Department registers or embassy
telephone books. Still, because of the vast size of the CIA and
the technical apparatus it uses, it is virtually impossible for them
not to operate out of the relative security of the U.S. embassies.
The Final Straw
Though many of the individual disclosures over the last year
of domestic surveillance by the CIA and consideration of assas-
sination plots have been more startling, the impact of the Welch
murder and publication of hundreds of names, primarily by left-
ist publications around the world, seems to be the final straw
that is breaking the back of CIA morale in the field.
In France and England, where more than 70 CIA names have
recently been disclosed in each country, there is little danger
perceived by CIA men.
The problem is much more serious in countries such as
Greece, Portugal, Spain, Italy or in Africa where there is serious
anti-U.S. feeling and where politically motivated assassination
is viewed as possible.
A similar fear exists here in West Germany, where no alleged
CIA names have been published yet, but there is still a trouble-
some but small band of terrorists operating.
"We're living in a world of armed lunatics who attack facili-
ties as a form of political expression," an agent said. "Whether
they are professional terrorists or just punks, they will be in-
248
Michael Getter
clined to go for the CIA guy if this kind of singling out goes on."
Informants acknowledge that most of the names being dis-
closed are in fact CIA employees, though a number of inaccura-
cies are said to have appeared on published lists, especially
among the 44 names of- alleged CIA agents in France published
thus far by the leftist newspaper Liberation.
Some Americans are reportedly being moved to new ad-
dresses for security after some addresses also were published.
There is concern in several U.S. embassies that the rush to
publish is also spilling over into wrongly identifying legitimate
diplomatic corps employees and widespread frustration at what
is viewed as a public failure to understand that only a relatively
small percentage of CIA employees are engaged in what could
be called spying, while the bulk serve as analysts or liaison men
with their counterparts in allied intelligence services.
The current situation, combined with what is perceived as an
unending flow of negative news about the United States and the
CIA, is also playing a major part in the surfacing of some serious
pessimism about the future, among at least some veterans.
"The intelligence community represents people of a certain
stripe," a senior officer said. "There is obviously some cold
warrior in us because most of us still believe that the objective
of the Soviet Union has not changed in 30 years and that objec-
tive is to get the United States out of Europe.
"Right now," he said, "they are getting some help."
Intelligence officials, including non-Americans, are wary of
the idea that what is happening now, in the disclosure of names,
is part of a civic-minded attempt to curb Agency activities that
undermine U.S. democracy and self-esteem and the govern-
ments of other countries.
Most officials see it as the work of leftists and their sympathiz-
ers among disgruntled former CIA and Foreign Service
employees.
The principal figure is ex-CIA man Philip Agee, who lives in
Britain, where his book. Inside the Company: CIA Diary, was
published last year.
However, according to Phil Kelly, one of the journalists on
the British magazine Time Out, which has published 65 alleged
CIA names in the last year, Mr. Agee's assistance was only
incidental in their case.
CM Morale Plummets
249
Based on Techniques
Mr. Kelly said Time Out's identification of people in England
is based mostly on techniques published by former Foreign Ser-
vice officer John Marks in a November 1974 article in the Wash-
ington Monthly called ' 'How to Spot a Spook . ' '
Mr. Kelly said that Mr. Agee helped the Time Out reporters
"refine their methods."
I n Paris, Liberation claimed that it came up with its list of
names in France through use of the embassy directory, various
identification codes, and the help of other journalists in London
and Washington who were "fed up with the clandestine activi-
ties of their government around the world."
The reference to other journalists was widely assumed to
mean the "Fifth Estate" group in Washington that publishes the
magazine CounterSpy.
Revelations in Rome
ROME — A U.S. author writing in a 3-day-old Italian leftist
newspaper today published the names of seven alleged CIA
agents operating in Rome.
Steve Weissman, a former editor of the U.S. liberal magazine
Ramparts, published the names in the third issue of La Repub-
blica, a non-Communist leftist tabloid. He wrote that he be-
lieved total CIA strength in Rome exceeded 40 persons, operat-
ing from cover jobs in the U.S. Embassy, military units, and
multinational companies.
A U.S. Embassy spokesman declined comment on the story.
Unlike newspapers which published similar lists in France and
Greece, La Repubblica did not print the alleged agents' street
addresses or telephone numbers.
14 Named in Greece
ATHENS— The weekly magazine Politika Themata in this
week's edition printed the names of 14 Greek-Americans alleg-
edly working for the CIA.
The magazine is owned by Yannis Horn, the publisher of the
Athens News, the English-language daily which revealed Mr.
Welch to be CIA chief in Greece.
The magazine said it had taken the names from the book pub-
lished in East Berlin in 1968 and brought up to date with new
information covering last year.
Where Do We
Go From Here?
by Philip Agee
The feeling is one of being completely overwhelmed, like
drowning in controversy, issues, sensational revelations, myriad
opinions from everywhere on what to do.
It's not just the energy required for absorbing well over 2,000
pages of official reports from the Rockefeller Commission, the
Senate and House investigating committees, the Murphy Com-
mission, and the Ford reforms — there's also two years' accumu-
lation of continuous media output. Heavy enough for an average
observer, an interested journalist, or even a political activist.
Heavier still for someone who has been a part of the controver-
sies for two years after having spent four years researching and
[The original version of this article was first published by
Jean-Paul Sartre in the September 1976 issue of Les Temps
Modernes. in Paris, in a special issue dedicated to alternative
views of the American Bicentennial. A revised version was
published in mid- 1977 in London, by the Agee-Hosenball
Defence Committee. It was further updated by the author
for this book.]
250
Where Do We Go From Here?
251
writing an account of the preceding 12 years' work inside the
CIA.
I ' ve read all those reports and hundreds of newspaper cuttings
because I want to get perspective on what's happened with the
CIA, FBI, and other intelligence and security services. I want to
be able to judge whether anything has changed. Or whether
business will go on as usual inside the political police forces
once the sensations subside.
Not many people worked on both sides. Lots were victims
and others were victimizing — my distinction, I suppose, was to
have done both. But that makes evaluation harder, not easier.
And, of course, I can be no "impartial" observer.
So many people have asked, often not so delicately, how in
hell I've survived and why the CIA didn't make me disappear
and don't I think I'm in danger. I used to laugh. But not now.
Now I too am beginning to wonder.
Studying the results of the different investigations produced a
kind of psychological disorientation, now a little schizophrenic,
now a little paranoid. I'd go along reading intensely about the
nature of counterintelligence or about problems of coordination
among agencies or about the functions of the Director of Central
Intelligence with the same kind of uncritical, receptive mind
frame I'd had studying the very same things in the CIA's training
classrooms back in 1957. Suddenly I would realize where I am
now, having done the unthinkable in resolving to take positive
action against the CIA by revealing its operations and naming all
those names. Like alternating between two personalities — like
the way I vacillated for a time over whether to name any names
at all. Perhaps a partial throwback to the Jesuit-imbued attitude
of being in the world but not of it.
Just as often, I'd get the feeling that some disaster was immi-
nent, that there's simply no way to survive the immense and vast
apparatus for repression that I was reading about. Sure, I was
reading about the past, but every morning I was also reading of
people disappearing in Buenos Aires, assassinations of Uru-
guayans I might have known, "suicides" in jail. Then a friend
would telephone and ask me what that odd clicking sound was,
and I'd say "they" probably just don't want me to forget
"they're" there. Then back to .reading and to straining my imagi-
nation to comprehend the CIA's plot to give Fidel Castro a
diving suit dusted inside with enough fungus to give him a
chronic case of "madura foot" skin disease, with the suit's
252
Philip Agee
breathing apparatus also contaminated with tuberculosis bacilli.
Attitudes, feelings, emotions — they add up to a sense of vul-
nerability to retaliation, maybe once the dust stirred up by reve-
lations and investigations begins to settle. But no thought of
withdrawal into some secure isolation — even if that were possi-
ble. That's what I did for a while after leaving the Agency. Now
is the time to sum up, evaluate what's been accomplished, and
look ahead to the next round.
Conventional Europeans often express dismay over our
American propensity for self-destruction. They see us as a so-
ciety bent on some kind of superexplosion and then, perhaps,
collapsing into a black hole. More often than not, I suspect,
what these people really fear is that America will cease being the
main prop for their own failing economic and social systems.
Cold War rhetoric revives as new efforts appear to create a
psychological climate of fear and tension with respect to "na-
tional survival." We see this in America as well.
Those of us who see the CIA and other security services as
impediments to achieving a higher form of democracy must an-
swer the charge that we are encouraging world domination by
the Soviet Union; that we are paving the way for imposition of a
Soviet-style system in the United States; that we are increasing
the possibility of nuclear war by encouraging the development
of global imbalance. If the past few years are any indicator,
maybe before this century ends the U.S. and some few allies,
like South Africa and Israel, could end up isolated and armed to
the teeth in an increasingly hostile world with nuclear war be-
coming acceptable as "the only way out."
We can argue that Soviet intent to rule the world is neither
demonstrable nor realistic — that domination of its immediate
border areas is quite distinct from the rest of the world as evi-
denced by the Yugoslav experience as well as by Italian,
French, Spanish, and other Communist parties' rejection of the
Soviet version of internationalism.
But we shouldn't be only defensive. We should show the sig-
nificance of the best of American traditions for the future of
socialism, particularly our deep-rooted belief that people must
have strong protections against oppression by government bu-
reaucracy. Herein lies the optimistic interpretation, the one we
should emphasize, of the past two years' CIA revelations, in-
deed of the IS years from the civil rights movement through the
Vietnam War and Watergate. Here we can see genuine popular
Where Do We Go From Here ?
253
traditions that must be preserved and cultivated while casting off
the institutions of the past that serve only a small elite.
We must also defend against the false dilemma that either we
move forward within traditional institutions or we destroy the
nation. Neither the Russian nor Chinese nor any other "nation"
was destroyed in their socialist revolutions, although certain
privileged groups did disappear as groups. Quite the contrary, in
spite of the human cost that in any case would compare favora-
bly with the early generations of ordinary people under colonial-
ism and industrial capitalism. National survival, in fact, isn't the
question: it's whether the old dominance by capitalists will drag
all of us down to dangerous and bitter isolation, or whether the
United States under socialist leadership can effectively transfer
its wealth of technology, capital, and other resources for the
benefit of all. Our opponents will always try to confuse their
class survival by equating it with "national survival."
When we read of "national security" and "survival" in the
various reports on the CIA and the FBI, we're reading about
their security and survival, not ours. Those are their security
services, not ours. It's their class security that they equate with
the "nation's survival." Probably not even Marx himself could
have imagined the kind of public debate within the ruling class
over security services that would demonstrate so clearly the
nature of class struggle. Here we've read of cobra venom, poi-
son dart guns, electronic eavesdropping, provocation of viol-
ence — all done by security services for a class that now rebukes
those services for having acted "illegally." The rebuke is mild —
20 years of crimes and not one indictment — but significant none-
theless. All in all, these investigations have been a ruling class
affair.
In analyzing the positive side of the past 15 years, however,
we ought not to credit spasms of conscience among decision
makers. Spontaneous, popular pressure forced their decisions to
retreat first here and then there — not overlooking, of course, the
determination and heroism demonstrated by the national libera-
tion movements in Vietnam, Cuba, Angola, and so many other
places. But, aside from ideology, we have learned an immense
amount of specific information that will serve for future defense
and protection when repression is intensified and the old meth-
ods are applied once again.
Psychological distractions aside, the various reports make ex-
tremely fascinating reading despite frequent repetitions, and
254
Philip Agee
they must be valued as the result of the first significant investiga-
tion of American intelligence and the last for many years to
come. Taken altogether, they constitute a treasure of informa-
tion on institutionalized counterrevolution and should be read
and studied by every political activist. We ought to assume that
what is said in these reports is probably true, although from
what is not said we also have much to leam.
First, the cost in people and money. None of the reports re-
veals how many people are employed in the U.S. intelligence
effort, although the Department of Defense had over 100,000
people working in intelligence at the end of FY 1975 with the
trend markedly downward. 1 Adding personnel of the FBI's
counterintelligence efforts, the CIA, National Security Agency,
intelligence components of the Department of State, the Depart-
ment of the Treasury, and the Drug Enforcement Administra-
tion, the total might pass 1 50,000 — although the Senate commit-
tee report mentions "hundreds of thousands of people. 1 12
None of the reports mentions explicitly the overall total of
money spent on American intelligence activities, nor do they
reveal how much the CIA or the NSA, for example, spend.
These omissions reflect a considerable victory for President
Ford, inasmuch as all the investigating commissions in varying
degrees recommended giving the public some idea of what intel-
ligence costs the country. Ford fought against disclosure of even
the grand total for all intelligence on the ludicrous argument put
forth by the CIA that extrapolations could lead the KGB to
discovery of the CIA's capabilities.
The House of Representatives committee under Congressman
Otis Pike found that the total intelligence budget is "more than
$10 billion," 3 which is "3 to 4 times more costly than the Con-
gress has been told," 4 and possibly five times more.
We get a hint, however, of the overall intelligence cost in the
Senate committee's report. In each place where the amounts
spent on intelligence, and their percentage as a part of the fed-
eral budget, were mentioned, the figures were deleted. Except
once where, apparently by clerical oversight, the overall na-
tional (strategic) intelligence cost is said to represent about 3%
of the total federal budget for FY 1976. s In dollars this would
amount to about $11.2 billion and would include the total ap-
proved budgets of the CIA, DIA, NSA, and National Recon-
naissance Office. However, according to the Senate committee,
adding tactical intelligence and indirect support costs would
double the amount spent on intelligence to $22.4 billion.
Where Do We Go From Here?
255
As to what proportion of the intelligence budget is spent by
the CIA alone, the Senate committee's report also gives some
clues. Item: "The DO (Director of Central Intelligence) con-
trols less than 10% of the combined national and tactical intelli-
gence efforts." 6 Item: "Real executive authority over at least
four-fifths of the total resources spent on intelligence activities
has resided with the Secretary of Defense." 7 Item: The Depart-
ment of Defense "controls nearly 90 percent of the nation's
spending on intelligence programs." 8 Thus the CIA would be
spending between $1 and $2 billion depending on whether one
takes the combined national, tactical, and indirect support costs
as the total, or simply the national program ($1 1.2 billion) as the
total.
According to the Senate committee's report, the buying power
of the intelligence budget has been steadily decreasing since the
mid-1960s even though the budget itself, due to inflation, has
been increasing in numbers of dollars spent. In 1976, according
to the report, the buying power in real terms is about equal to the
intelligence budgets of the late 1950s. 9
How is the money divided among the target countries?
"Nearly two-thirds of the (FY 1975) resources consumed, 65
cents of each dollar, were directed toward the Soviet Union and
U.S. commitments to NATO; 25 cents of each dollar were spent
to support U.S. interests in Asia, with most of this targeted
against China; the Arab-Israeli confrontation in the Middle East
claimed seven cents; Latin America, less than two cents; and the
rest of the world, about a penny." 10
Predominance of technical intelligence programs is evident.
The commission investigating government organization for for-
eign affairs, established in 1972 under the veteran State Depart-
ment "trouble-shooter" Robert D. Murphy, stated in its final
report in mid-1975: "Today the bulk of information comes from
open sources, overhead reconnaissance, and electronic signals
and communications, with only a small but possibly critical com-
ponent derived from clandestine sources." 11
The Senate committee's report is more specific: "Approxi-
mately 87 percent of the resources devoted to collection is spent
on technical sensors compared to only 13 percent for HU-
MINT" (traditional undercover agents and overt human
sources). 12 The committee concludes, however, that in intelli-
gence as elsewhere, machines cannot completely replace men:
"The United States cannot forego clandestine human collection
and expect to maintain the same quality of intelligence on mat-
256
Philip Agee
ters of the highest importance to our national security." 13 This
statement accurately reflects the CIA's traditional concern that
too often only humans can report on secret intentions.
As an aid to the CIA's critical HUMINT program, it seems,
the tradition of plying people with booze is still as strong as ever.
The House committee reported that one typical, medium-sized
CIA Station "spent $86,000 in liquor and cigarettes during the
past five years. The majority of these purchases were designated
'operational gifts' — gifts to friendly agents or officials in return
for information or assistance." 14 At another unnamed CIA Sta-
tion, the Pike committee reports, $41,000 were spent on liquor in
1971, and that Station Chief, since transferred, is now in charge
of CIA operations in Angola, i.e., during the doomed CIA-
South African intervention in the 1975 civil war. 18 One must
hope that this officer will now be placed in charge of the CIA's
operations in Namibia or Zimbabwe.
We discover, then, confirmation that the overhead reconnais-
sance programs and the other technical collection operations,
mainly the NSA's SIGINT programs for interception and analy-
sis of communications and electronic emissions, devour the li-
on's share of the national intelligence budget. Analysis and prep-
aration of finished reports also receives appropriate emphasis,
as does the CIA's counterintelligence efforts against other secur-
ity services which are largely a part of the overall HUMINT
program. Not overlooked, however, in the Senate, House, and
Murphy Commission reports is the continuing need to rely on
the most controversial of the CIA's activities: covert action.
The Murphy Commission defines covert action as "activity
abroad intended not to gather information but to influence
events, an activity midway between diplomacy and war. It has
taken many forms, from the financial support of friendly publi-
cations to the mounting of significant paramilitary efforts." 16
Similarly the Pike committee defines covert action as "activity
other than purely information-gathering, which is directed at
producing a particular political, economic, or military result." 17
Senator Church's committee describes covert action as "the
secret use of power and persuasion" 18 and as "clandestine ac-
tivity designed to influence foreign governments, events, organi-
zations or persons in support of U.S. foreign policy conducted
in such a way that the involvement of the U.S. Government is
not apparent." 19 Covert action operations, in the Senate report,
include "political and propaganda programs designed to influ-
Where Do We Go From Here ?
257
ence or support foreign political parties, groups, and specific
political and military leaders; economic action programs; para-
military operations; and some counter-insurgency programs.
Human intelligence collection, or spying, and counter-espionage
programs are not included under the rubric of covert action
operations." 20
Expressed still another way, covert action is the way the CIA
uses the information it collects in order to penetrate and manipu-
late the institutions of power in a given country, i.e., the military
services and political parties, the security services, the trade
unions, youth and student organizations, cultural and profes-
sional societies, and the public information media. Covert action
is the way the CIA props up and strengthens the "friendlies"
and disrupts, divides, weakens, and destroys the "enemies."
Covert action, then, is the American euphemism for subversion
and counterrevolution.
Both the Senate and the House committees questioned the
CIA's statutory authority to engage in covert action since no
explicit power for such operations was granted to the Agency in
pertinent legislation such as the National Security Act of 1947
and its amendment, the Central Intelligence Agency Act of 1949.
Successive administrations since covert action began in 1948
have justified these operations on the vaguely worded authority
in the 1947 law for the CIA to "perform such other functions
and duties related to intelligence affecting the national security
as the National Security Council, may, from time to time, di-
rect." 21 Nevertheless, only when the Hughes-Ryan amendment
to the Foreign Assistance Act was passed in 1974 did the Con-
gress recognize the legitimacy of covert action. This amendment
required the President to report to six congressional subcommit-
tees "in a timely fashion" the scope and description of all covert
action operations and to certify that each such operation is im-
portant to the national security of the United States. Besides
extending congressional control over covert action and legitim-
izing it, this amendment also — not unintentionally — killed the
old doctrine of "plausible denial" wherein presidents could
plead ignorance of covert action, operations that become
"blown."
The report of the Senate committee, Book I, contains a most
useful background section on the history of the CIA and particu-
larly on the attitudes of leading American government figures at
the beginning of the Cold War. Frequent repetition of these
258
Philip Agee
themes highlighting the Soviet/International Communist threat,
as the early justification for covert action operations, suggests
their persistence in the thought patterns of those who drafted the
current Senate report, as we shall see when covert action is
recommended for the future.
The Second World War saw the defeat of one brand of
totalitarianism. A new totalitarian challenge quickly
arose. The Soviet Union, a major ally in war, became
America's principal adversary in peace. The power of
fascism was in ruin but the power of communism was
mobilized. Not only had the communist parties in
France, Italy and Greece emerged politically strength-
ened by their roles in the Resistance, but the armies of
the Soviet Union stretched across the center of
Europe. 22
Following the war there was a distinct possibility of
a Soviet assault on Western Europe. Communist re-
gimes had been established in Poland, Hungary, Ro-
mania and Bulgaria. Czechoslovakia went Communist
in 1948 through a coup supported by the Russian
Army. There was the presence of the Soviet Army in
Eastern Europe and the pressure on Berlin. 23
By late 1946 cabinet officials were preoccupied with
the Soviet threat, and over the next year their fears
intensified. For U.S. policymakers, international
events seemed to be a sequence of Soviet incursions.
[Communist gains are cited in Iran, Greece, Poland,
Hungary. Romania, the Philippines, Czechoslovakia,
France, and Italy.] Policymakers could, and did, look
at these developments as evidence of the need for the
United States to respond. 24
The CIA's covert action operations are everywhere seen in
these reports as a response to the Soviet threat, looming either
directly or through national Communist parties. The first covert
action arm of the CIA, the Office of Policy Coordination, was
established in 1948 by a directive that also referred to the "vi-
cious covert activities of the USSR." 25 OPC was authorized to
engage in "covert political, psychological, and economic war-
fare. These early activities were directed against the Soviet
threat. They included countering Soviet propaganda and covert
Soviet support of labor unions and student groups in Western
Where Do We Go From Here ?
259
Europe, direct U.S. support of foreign political parties, 'eco-
nomic warfare,' sabotage, assistance to refugee liberation
groups, and support of anti-Communist groups in occupied or
threatened areas." 29
Still another precise description: "Psychological operations
were primarily media-related activities, including unattributed
publications, forgeries, and subsidization of publications; politi-
cal action involved exploitation of dispossessed persons and de-
fectors, and support to political parties; paramilitary activities
included support to guerrillas and sabotage; economic activities
consisted of monetary and fiscal operations." 27
Perhaps the best description of the attitude during the early
Cold War is this Churchillian passage from the 1954 investiga-
tion of intelligence organization under the Hoover Commission:
It is now clear that we are facing an implacable enemy
whose avowed objective is world domination by what-
ever means and at whatever cost. There are no rules in
such a game. Hitherto acceptable norms of human
conduct do not apply. If the U.S. is to survive, long-
standing concepts of "fair play" must be reconsid-
ered. We must develop effective espionage and count-
er-espionage services. We must leam to subvert, sabo-
tage and destroy our enemies by more clever, more
sophisticated and more effective methods than those
used against us. It may become necessary that the
American people will be made acquainted with, under-
stand and support this fundamentally repugnant
philosophy. 28
No attempt is made in any of the reports to evaluate, with the
benefit of hindsight, the validity of U.S. fears of the Soviet
Union following World War II. Neither is there any suggestion
that Soviet actions may have been a response to aggressive CIA
operations. We find little evaluation of the early CIA operations
directed against Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, except
that some of the more provocative actions ended in the mid-
1950s. Indirect admission of failure is evident in the discussion
of the CIA's expansion of paramilitary operations in the Far
East during the Korean War: "During this period the CIA's
Office of Procurement acquired some $152 million worth of for-
eign weapons and ammunition for use by guerrilla forces that
never came into existence." 29
260
Philip Agee
Nevertheless, the Deputy Directorate of Plans (also known as
the Clandestine Services), which was in charge of the CIA's
clandestine collection and counterintelligence programs and its
covert action operations, came to dominate the Agency. Covert
action operations also came to dominate the Agency's opera-
tional patterns around the world, no doubt in response to Na-
tional Security Council Directives such as this one which or-
dered the CIA to:
Create and exploit problems for International Commu-
nism;
Discredit International Communism, and reduce the
strength of its parties and organization;
Reduce International Communist control over any
areas of the world. 30
Covert action operations not only became the major instru-
ment in the American foreign policy goal to "roll back the Iron
Curtain." "Covert action soon became a routine program of
influencing governments and covertly exercising power — involv-
ing literally hundreds of projects each year. By 1953 there were
major covert operations underway in 48 countries, consisting of
propaganda, paramilitary and political action projects. By the
1960s, covert action had come to mean any clandestine activity
designed to influence foreign governments, events, organiza-
tions or persons in support of United States foreign policy. Sev-
eral thousand individual covert action projects have been under-
taken since 1961." 31 One project, the report fails to make clear,
can go on for many years as long as renewals are approved.
"The Committee has found that the CIA has conducted some
900 major or sensitive covert action projects plus several thou-
sand smaller projects since 1961." 32
Since the revelations of CIA covert action operations sparked
by Ramparts Magazine in 1967 these activities have decreased.
"The period 1968 to the present has registered declines in every
functional and geographic category of covert action — except for
paramilitary operations in the Far East which did not drop until
1972. The number of individual covert action projects dropped
by 50 percent from fiscal year 1964 (when they reached an all-
time high) to fiscal year 1968. ,,3a
Nevertheless, covert action has by no means ended. "Yet, the
overall reduction did not affect the fundamental assumptions,
Where Do We Go From Here ?
261
organization and incentives governing the DDO [the new name
for Deputy Directorate of Operations, the Clandestine Ser-
vices]. Indeed, in 1975 clandestine activities still constituted 37
percent of the Agency's total budget. The rationale remains the
same, and the operational capability is intact — as the CIA activi-
ties in Chile illustrated." 34
Thirty-seven percent of the Agency's budget provides
hundreds of millions of dollars for current covert action opera-
tions. As the Senate committee's report points out: "The num-
ber of projects by itself is not an adequate measure of the scope
of covert action. Projects can vary considerably in size, cost,
duration, and effect. Today, for example, one-fourth of the cur-
rent covert action projects are relatively high-cost (over $100,-
000 annually)." 38
Both the Church and the Pike committees' reports are replete
with information on general categories of the CIA's operations
and on specific operations as well. Both committees studied spe-
cific covert action projects in detail, the Church committee re-
viewing these operations over the past 25 years and the Pike
committee reviewing all projects approved by the Forty Com-
mittee (the group chaired by the President's national security
advisor with participation by the Undersecretary of State and
the Deputy Secretary of Defense) during the past ten years. The
Pike committee found that since 1965 the largest category of
individual covert action projects requiring approval outside
the CIA (32%) was for financial election support to foreign poli-
ticians and political parties. Twenty-nine percent of Forty Com-
mittee approvals during the same period were for media and
propaganda projects, while 23% were for paramilitary activities
(secret armies, financial support to warring factions, training and
advisors, and shipment of arms and ammunition). 36 The Pike
committee alsofoundthat "a plethora of foreign civic, religious,
professional, and labor organizations have received CIA funding
without special geographical concentration but with plenty of
Third World emphasis." 37
In the 900 "major or sensitive" covert action projects discov-
ered by the Church committee, together with "several thou-
sand" smaller projects undertaken since 1961, funds were pro-
vided for "a seemingly limitless range of covert action programs
affecting youth groups, labor unions, universities, publishing
houses, and other private institutions in the United States and
abroad." 38 A former Station .Chief in one country where covert
262
Philip Agee
action programs were heavy and persistent testified to the Sen-
ate committee that "any aspiring politician almost automatically
would come to CIA to see if we could help him get elected. . . .
They were the wards of the United States, and that whatever
happened for good or bad was the fault of the United States. 1 ' 39
In the media field the Pike committee reported that "by far the
largest single recipient has been a [unnamed] European publish-
ing house f unded since 1 95 1 . " 40 For its part the Church commit-
tee revealed that prior to 1967 the CIA had "sponsored, subsi-
dized or produced over 1 ,000 books, approximately 25 percent
of them in English. In 1967 alone, the CIA published or subsi-
dized over 200 books, ranging from books on African safaris and
wildlife to translations of Machiavelli's The Prince into Swahili
and works of T. S. Eliot into Russian, to a competitor to Mao's
little red book, which was entitled Quotations from Chairman
Liu."* 1 Among the books was the fabricated Penkovsky Papers,
supposedly based on writings of the famous Russian spy.
The importance of books is recognized in the CIA, as in this
passage from a memorandum written in 1961 by the Chief of the
Covert Action Staff: "Books differ from other propaganda me-
dia, primarily because one single book can significantly change
the reader's attitude and action to an extent unmatched by the
impact of any other single medium." 42 For this reason, presum-
ably, the CIA has continued to publish books. Although it appar-
ently ceased publishing in the U.S. in 1967 (following the major
scandal relating to the CIA's penetration of domestic institu-
tions, especially the National Student Association), the CIA
since then "has published some 250 books abroad, most of them
in foreign languages." 43
The Church committee reveals that the Agency continues to
penetrate the journalistic profession. "The CIA currently main-
tains a network of several hundred foreign individuals . . . who
provide the CIA with direct access to a large number of newspa-
pers and periodicals, scores of press services and news agen-
cies, radio and television stations, commercial book publishers,
and other foreign media outlets. "** Concerning U .S. journalists,
"Approximately 50 of the assets are American journalists or
employees of U.S. media organizations," 48 with about half of
these accredited and the rest free-lance. In early 1978, the CIA
asserted its need for continued utilization of journalists on a
"voluntary basis."
Orchestration of propaganda through these journalist agents is
Where Do We Go From Here ?
263
illustrated by this extract from a CIA cable, dated September 25,
1970, relating to propaganda against the Allende election: "Sao
Paulo, Tegucigalpa, Buenos Aires, Lima, Montevideo, Bogota,
Mexico City report continued replay of Chile theme materials.
Items also carried in New York Times and Washington Post.
Propaganda activities continue to generate good coverage of
Chile developments along our theme guidance." 46
Religious organizations, clergy, and missionaries have long
been used by the CIA both for intelligence collection and for
covert action. The Senate committee reports "direct operational
use of 21 individuals" in this field who were Americans, 47 and
although the CIA in February 1976 renounced any "secret paid
or contractual relationship" with American missionaries or
members of the clergy, the Agency's use of foreigners in this
field presumably will continue.
The most important general category of covert action opera-
tions about which very little is said in these reports is the trade
union field. CIA programs in national and international labor
unions were vast in scope during the 1950s and 1960s, and the
lack of serious discussion of them in the Senate and House
committees' reports is, to me, a very strong indicator that the
Agency continues to be quite active promoting "moderate,"
"nonpolitical," docile trade unions. The only significant men-
tion of labor operations in the Pike report is the brief statement
that "one labor confederation in a developing country received
an annual subsidy of $30,000 in three successive years." 48
The Church report simply mentions that prior to the 1967
scandals the Agency had enjoyed "the cooperation of an Ameri-
can labor organization in selected overseas labor activities." 49
The report goes on to reveal that after the "tightening up" in the
wake of the 1967 scandals, the Agency decided to continue to
fund "several international trade union organizations." 50 Aside
from suggesting the continuing importance of the CIA's labor
operations, these scant references say quite a lot about senators'
and congresspersons' deference to the electoral importance of
George Meany, the President of the American Federation of
Labor and from the beginning the CIA's "Mr. Big" in labor
operations.
American academics get high marks from the Senate commit-
tee on their cooperation with the CIA which "is now using sev-
eral hundred American academics, who in addition to providing
leads and sometimes making introductions for intelligence pur-
264
Philip Agee
poses, occasionally write books and other material to be used
for propaganda purposes abroad. . . . These academics are lo-
cated in over 100 American colleges, universities and related
institutes. . . . The Committee notes that American academics
provide valuable assistance [for] obtaining leads on potential
foreign intelligence sources, especially those from communist
countries [who are among the] many foreign nationals in the
United States." 81
In paramilitary operations, the Church committee confirms
CIA participation in the overthrow of Arbenz in Guatemala in
1954 and in attempts to overthrow Sukarno in Indonesia in
1958, 52 as well as similar operations in Korea, Vietnam, Cuba,
and Laos. In a critical vein, however, the committee finds that
"of the five paramilitary activities studied by the Committee,
only one appears to have achieved its objectives. The goal of
supporting a central government was achieved — the same gov-
ernment is still in power many years later. There were a few
sporadic reports of the operation in the press, but it was never
fully revealed or confirmed." Even so, "in no paramilitary case
studied by the Committee was complete secrecy fully
preserved." 83
One's thoughts run immediately to the Congo-Zaire of the
early 1960s when considering which "success" the Church com-
mittee means — especially when, a couple of paragraphs later,
testimony is cited on the difficulty of withdrawing from paramili-
tary operations once started: "This is well-illustrated by the case
of the Congo, where a decision was taken to withdraw in early
1966, and it took about a year and a half before the operation
was terminated. " B4
The key figure in the CIA's successful Congo-Zaire paramili-
tary operations of the 1960s was, of course. Col. Joseph Mo-
butu, now known as President Mobutu Sese Seko. Could Mo-
butu also be the unnamed "Third World leader" who received
$960,000 over a 14-year period, according to the Pike committee
report? 58 Not many others have survived for 14 years. No mat-
ter, the Pike committee's revelation is sure to sour the CIA's
relations with other Third World "leaders" whose bribes may
only have totaled a few hundred thousand dollars.
Two major CIA paramilitary operations are described by the
House of Representatives committee: support to the Kurdish
nationalist movement in Iraq in 1972-1975 86 and support to the
Holden Roberto and Jonas Savimbi factions in the 1975 civil war
in Angola. 87
Where Do We Go From Here ?
265
In order to cause problems for Iraq, the Shah of Iran, who was
engaged in a border dispute with Iraq, asked Dr. Kissinger and
President Nixon for U.S. participation in his program of support
to the Kurds, led by Mustafa Barzani, who were then in armed
rebellion against the Iraqi central government. Eventually some
$16 million was spent by the CIA on this operation, only a frac-
tion of what the Shah spent, but valued by the Shah and Barzani
both for its symbolic importance and, to Barzani, as a guarantee
against any sudden cutoff of the Shah's aid. According to the
committee, the U.S. aid was also undertaken "as a favor to our
ally [the Shah] who had cooperated with U.S. intelligence agen-
cies [the CIA] and had come to feel menaced by his neighbor
[Iraq]." 58
Barzani on numerous occasions expressed his distrust of the
Shah's intentions, and he showed his appreciation to Kissinger
by sending him three rugs and, when Kissinger married, a gold
and pearl necklace. Nevertheless, the aid was not meant to pro-
vide for a final Kurdish victory and the limited autonomy that
Barzani had fought for since the 1920s. "The United States
personally restrained the insurgents from an all-out offensive
on one occasion when such an attack might have been success-
ful
In early 1975, as soon as the Shah got his border concessions
from Iraq, he cut off aid to the Kurds, and the CIA did too. The
cutoff came as a severe shock. "A CIA cable from the COS
[probably in Tehran] to the [CIA Director] describes the
method used by our ally [the Shah] to inform the ethnic group's
[the Kurds'] leadership. On March 5, a representative of our
ally's intelligence service [no doubt the dreaded SAVAK secret
police] visited the Headquarters of the ethnic group and 'told
(them) in bluntest imaginable terms' that the border was being
closed, that assistance had ended, and that the Kurds should
settle with the Iraqis on whatever terms they could get." 80 The
Iraqis, knowing of the cutoff, took the offensive and eliminated
Kurdish resistance.
In the aftermath, 200,000 Kurdish refugees were created, but
despite pleas from Barzani the U.S. refused to extend humani-
tarian assistance. The Shah forcibly repatriated to Iraq over
40,000 Kurds who sought refuge in Iran, and the U.S. refused to
admit even one Kurdish refugee even though they qualified for
admittance as political asylees. As one "high U.S. official" told
the Pike committee staff, "Covert action should not be confused
with missionary work." 61
266
Philip Agee
The Angolan intervention by the CIA, though widely re-
ported, is clarified in the Pike committee report. Support for the
Holden Roberto group began in January 1975, and in midsum-
mer support for the Savimbi forces began. The House commit-
tee concludes that the Soviet-Cuban buildup to help the MPLA
(which the Soviets had supported for ten years against Port-
uguese colonialism) came as a reaction to the startling gains of
the Roberto and Savimbi forces thanks to the $31 million worth
of assistance pumped in by the CIA. As to the reasons for the
U.S. getting involved, CIA Director William Colby could find
scant ideological differences among the three groups, "all of
whom are nationalists above all else," 92 according to the com-
mittee. Responding to committee questions, Colby said, "They
are all independents. They are all for black Africa. They are all
for some fuzzy kind of social system, you know, without really
much articulation, but some sort of let's not be exploited by the
capitalist system."
Mr. Aspin (a committee member): And why are the
Chinese backing the moderate group?
Mr. Colby: Because the Soviets are backing the
MPLA is the simplest answer.
Mr. Aspin: It sounds like that is why we are doing it.
Mr. Colby: It is. 83
Another reason, the committee concluded, was Kissinger's
desire to encourage "moderate" independence groups in south-
ern Africa and the stability of such figures as Mobutu, who
supported Roberto, and President Kaunda of Zambia who sup-
ported Savimbi. "Past [U.S.] support to Mobutu, along with his
responsiveness to some of the United States' recent diplomatic
needs for Third World support, make it equally likely that the
paramount factor in U.S. involvement is Dr. Kissinger's desire
to reward and protect African leaders in the area. " M
The most complete account of any major CIA covert action
operation is the Senate committee's separate 62-page report on
operations in Chile from 1963 to 1973. 88 It is unique as an official
account of the many secret methods used by three successive
American administrations to prevent the Chilean people from
exercising their right to choose their own political leadership.
Altogether, over $13 million was spent, and this money, if calcu-
Where Do We Go From Here?
267
lated at its blackmarket buying power, may well have had an
impact equivalent to three or four times as much.
Great detail makes this report exceedingly important not only
as a clarification of what happened in Chile, but for its value in
analyzing future "destabilization" operations and defeating
them. It's all there: millions of dollars to the non-left political
parties, mainly the Christian Democrats; huge amounts also to
El Mercurio, the media giant; financial support to the truckers
who paralyzed the economy in 1972 and 1973; financial support
to the right-wing terrorist organization, Patria y Libertad; eco-
nomic squeeze through retention of credits, both by private in-
stitutions and through U.S. dominance of the multilateral agen-
cies; CIA weapons to a group planning the assassination of
Army General Schneider in order to provoke a military coup;
ITT's offer of $1 million to the CIA for use against the 1970
Allende campaign and its later spending, with CIA assistance
and participation by other U.S. companies, of some $700,000 in
the campaign; finally, the revolting but logical CIA support for
the security services of the Pinochet regime.
The CIA's political intervention in Italy over the years has
been more successful, in that its clients, principally the Christian
Democrats (but also the neofascists), have managed to retain
power, if only just, for almost 30 years. The Pike committee
report describes how the CIA has spent some $75 million in
Italian political campaigns since 1948, with $10 million spent in
the 1972 elections alone. 9 * Of more importance, perhaps, was
the CIA's passage of $800,000 to General Vito Miceli, former
head of Italian military intelligence and a leader of the neofascist
MSI. Miceli at the time (1972) was awaiting trial (he still is) for
his part in the 1970 right-wing coup plot known as the Borghese
affair. 67 Although the CIA opposed giving Miceli the money,
spending of which was uncontrolled but supposedly for
"propaganda activities," American Ambassador Graham Mar-
tin insisted and prevailed in order "to demonstrate solidarity
[with Miceli] for the long pull. " M Martin went on to preside over
the final collapse in South Vietnam.
Not included in the Pike committee report but certainly worth
recalling is the decision by President Ford, leaked to journalists
in early January 1976, approving during the previous month the
spending by the CIA of some $6 million between then and the
next Italian general elections. Indicative also of Ford and Kis-
singer thinking on the "long pull" in Italy was the visit in late
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Philip Agee
September 1975 of neofascist leader Giorgio Almirante to Wash-
ington where, among other activities, he met with staff members
of the National Security Council — the body (chaired by the Pres-
ident) that governs the CIA. 89
Perhaps with Italy in mind, the Church committee warned that
"covert action techniques within or against a foreign society can
have unintended consequences that sometimes subvert [sic]
long-term goals. For instance, extended covert support to for-
eign political leaders, parties, labor unions, or the media has not
always accomplished the intended objective of strengthening
them against the communist challenge. In some cases it has both
encouraged a debilitating dependence on United States covert
support, and made those receiving such support vulnerable to
repudiation in their own society when the covert ties are ex-
posed." 70 As if in longing for "the good old days," the Senate
committee concluded: "Some covert operations have passed re-
trospective public judgements, such as the support given West-
ern European democratic parties facing strong communist op-
position in the later 1940s and 1950s. Others have not. In the
view of the Committee, the covert harassment of the democrati-
cally elected government of Salvador Allende in Chile did not
command U.S. public approval." 71
In a similar vein, the Senate committee laments two other
grisly CIA programs: assassinations against foreign leaders ("an
aberration") and the use of biological and chemical agents
against people ("massive abridgements of the rights of Ameri-
can citizens"). The 350-page assassination report 72 contains a
massive amount of data, including extracts from previously se-
cret internal CIA communications, on the Agency's involvement
in attempts to assassinate five foreign leaders:
Patrice Lumumba. In 1960 the CIA sent assassins and poison
to the Congo in order to kill Lumumba, but appropriate access to
the Congolese leader was never obtained. Nevertheless, the CIA
had foreknowledge of Mobutu's plans to deliver Lumumba to
his enemies in Katanga in January 1961, and knew that Lu-
mumba would most probably be assassinated by those enemies.
The Senate committee concludes: "There is no evidence of CIA
involvement in this plan or in bringing about the death of Lu-
mumba in Katanga." 73
As background, the Senate report states the problem:
In the summer of I960, there was great concern at the
Where Do We Go From Here ?
269
highest levels in the United States government about
the role of Patrice Lumumba in the Congo. Lumumba,
who served briefly as Premier of the newly independ-
ent nation, was viewed with alarm by United States
policymakers because of what they perceived as his
magnetic public appeal and his leanings toward the
Soviet Union. ... In mid-September, after losing a
struggle for leadership of the government to Kasavubu
and Joseph Mobutu, Chief of Staff of the Congolese
armed forces, Lumumba sought protection from the
United Nations forces in Leopoldville. . . . Early in
December Mobutu's troops captured Lumumba . . .
transferred Lumumba to . . . Katanga province. Sev-
eral weeks later Katangan authorities announced Lu-
mumba's death. 74
Meanwhile, the CIA's plotting to assassinate Lumumba had
proceeded following "President Eisenhower's strong expression
of concern about Lumumba at a meeting of the National Secur-
ity Council on August 18, 1960 [which was] taken by Allen
Dulles as authority to assassinate Lumumba. . . . Indeed one
NSC staff member present at the August 18 meeting believed
that he witnessed a presidential order to assassinate Lu-
mumba." 75
The report is unclear on how much the CIA helped Mobutu to
capture Lumumba during the period between his escape from
UN custody on November 27, 1960, and his capture on Decem-
ber 3. A November 28 cable reads: "(Station) working with
(Congolese government) to get roads blocked and troops alerted
(to block) possible escape route." 78 Nevertheless, a CIA officer
in Leopoldville at the time, Victor Hedgman, testified to the
committee that he (Hedgman) was "not a major assistance" in
tracking down Lumumba. 77
The committee could find no evidence that the CIA was be-
hind the decision to turn Lumumba over to Katangan authori-
ties, although up to the time of the turnover on January 17, 1961,
the CIA "was convinced that 'drastic steps' were necessary to
prevent Lumumba's return to power." 78 At the very same time
Mobutu himself was on the verge of being overthrown by a
mutiny of the Leopoldville garrison which, according to a CIA
cable, "will mutiny within two or three days unless drastic ac-
tion taken to satisfy complaints." 78
The UN report written in the aftermath of Lumumba's assas-
sination mentioned others, followers of Lumumba, who had
270
Philip Agee
been delivered by Mobutu to Katanga and who "were killed
there in horrible circumstances." 80 Knowing of these prece-
dents, the CIA Station in Katanga (Elizabethville) could
scarcely conceal its glee on learning of Lumumba's delivery by
Mobutu. In a cable to Washington, the CIA chief in Katanga,
paraphrasing a popular song of the time, joked: "Thanks for
Patrice. If we had known he was coming we would have baked a
snake." 61
Fidel Castro. The Senate committee found "concrete evi-
dence of at least eight plots involving the CIA to assassinate
Fidel Castro from 1960 to 1965. Although some of the assassina-
tion plots did not go beyond the stage of planning and prepara-
tion, one plot, involving the use of underworld figures, report-
edly twice progressed to the point of sending poison pills to
Cuba and dispatching teams to commit the deed. Another plot
involved furnishing weapons and other assassination devices to
a Cuban dissident. The proposed assassination devices ran the
gamut from high-powered rifles to poison pills, poison pens,
deadly bacterial powders, and other devices." 82
"The most ironic of these plots took place on November 22,
1963 — the very day that President Kennedy was shot in Dallas —
when a CIA official offered a poison pen to a Cuban for use
against Castro while at the same time an emissary from Presi-
dent Kennedy was meeting with Castro to explore the possibility
of improved relations." 83
Other plots were designed to ruin Castro's image: to spray his
broadcasting studio with a chemical that produces effects similar
to LSD; to dust his shoes with a strong depilatory that would
make his beard fall out (already tested on animals); to give Cas-
tro cigars impregnated with a chemical that produces temporary
disorientation.
Other plots to assassinate Castro involved giving him a box of
his favorite cigars contaminated with botulinum toxin "so po-
tent that a person would die after putting one in his mouth." 84
Another would use an exotic seashell, rigged to explode in an
area where Castro commonly went skin diving. Other targets of
assassination in Cuba, one would have assumed, were Raul Cas-
tro and Che Guevara.
Rafael Trujillo. From the spring of 1960 until Trujillo's assas-
sination on May 30, 1961, the CIA was in contact with political
Where Do We Go From Here ?
271
dissidents, at least some of whom effected the assassination.
Although three pistols and three carbines were passed to the
dissidents, the Senate committee could not find "direct evidence
that the weapons which were passed were used in the assassina-
tion. ' <SB Although there was no doubt that the dissidents in-
tended to assassinate Trujillo, and the weapons were given for
that purpose, an attempt was made to cover up U.S. government
sponsorship.
"The day before the assassination a cable, personally author-
ized by President Kennedy, was sent to the United States' Con-
sul General in the Dominican Republic stating that the United
States government, as a matter of general policy, could not con-
done political assassination, but at the same time indicating that
the United States continued to support the dissidents and stood
ready to recognize them in the event that they were successful in
their endeavor to overthrow Trujillo." 8 "
According to the Senate report, American desire to eliminate
Trujillo was partly a public relations concern and partly fear of
another Cuba. "He was regarded throughout much of the Carib-
bean and Latin America as a protege of the United States. Tru-
jillo's rule, always harsh and dictatorial, became more arbitrary
during the 1950s. As a result, the United States' image was
increasingly tarnished in the eyes of many Latin Americans.
Increasingly American awareness of Trujillo's brutality and fear
that it would lead to a Castro-style revolution caused United
States officials to consider various plans to hasten his abdication
or downfall. " 87 Had Trujillo survived only a few years he would
have had plenty of support and company, starting with the Bra-
zilian generals in 1964, and followed by the other harsh, right-
wing regimes promoted by the CIA in Latin America later in the
1960s and 1970s.
General Rene Schneider. As a constitutionalist and Com-
mander of the Chilean Army, General Schneider was a principal
obstacle to the CIA 's attempts to prevent Salvador Allende from
taking office after his election. Schneider was shot resisting a
kidnapping attempt on October 22, and he died three days later.
The Senate committee found that "the United States govern-
ment supported, and sought to instigate a military coup to block
Allende. U.S. officials [CIA and U.S. Army Attache] supplied
financial aid, machine guns, and other equipment to various mili-
tary figures who opposed Allende. Although the CIA continued
Philip Agee
to support the coup plotters up to Schneider's shooting ... it
does not appear that any of the equipment supplied by the CIA
to coup plotters in Chile was used in the kidnapping." 88 In fact,
the report states, "the CIA had withdrawn active support of the
group which carried out the actual kidnap attempt on October
22. " 8B Again, the Senate committee is very careful to separate
the intent of the CIA and U.S. policy makers by distinguishing
the policy of assassination from the act as it finally occurred.
NgoDinhDiem. Diem, the South Vietnamese dictator, and his
brother Nhu, were assassinated during a Generals' coup on No-
vember 2, 1963. The committee found that "although the United
States supported the coup, there is no evidence that American
officials favored the assassination. Indeed, it appears that the
assassination of Diem was not part of the Generals' pre-coup
planning but instead was a spontaneous act. 1 ' 90
Aside from these five specific cases studied by the Senate
committee, evidence was also discovered that during the early
1960s the CIA established an assassination capability (termed
"Executive Action" in the Agency) for general purpose target-
ing . The Agency cryptonym was ZRRIFLE. "In general. Pro-
ject ZRRIFLE involved assessing the problems and require-
ments of assassination and developing a stand-by assassination
capability; more specifically, it involved 'spotting' potential
agents and 'researching' assassination techniques that might be
used." 91 The committee found no new plots that might have
come under authority of this project, but the project was eventu-
ally merged with other efforts under way to assassinate Fidel
Castro.
It is important to place the CIA assassination plots within the
larger context of covert action operations and policy goals in the
countries concerned. As the report points out, in all five cases of
CIA involvement, the principal figures were impediments to
American policy goals. That Castro survived, or that the others
may not have been killed directly by the CIA, in no way detracts
from the importance of these revelations and the value of the
Senate report.
The Senate committee's findings are also rich in detail on the
CIA's programs for testing and using chemical and biological
agents (which at certain times overlapped with similar programs
of the U.S. Army). Although these programs apparently started
Where Do We Go From Here ?
273
with defense against possible hostile chemical or biological at-
tack in mind, the committee found that "soon this defensive
orientation became secondary as the possibility of using these
chemical and biological agents to obtain information from, or to
gain control of, enemy agents, became apparent." 92
As early as 1947 the U.S. Navy began research into the possi-
ble speech-inducing drugs such as scopolamine and mescaline
(Project CHATTER). 93 The CIA followed with a variety of pro-
grams beginning with Project BLUEBIRD in 1950 (renamed
Project ARTICHOKE in 1951) in which interrogations were
conducted overseas using psychiatric examinations, sodium
pentothal, and hypnosis. 94 MKNAOMI was a joint CIA-Army
project to stockpile severely incapacitating and lethal biological
and chemical materials and the means for their application. 96
This program lasted from 1952 to 1970 and included develop-
ment of poison darts and dart guns, not only for killing but also
for temporary incapacitation. One such gun could fire darts
"coated with a chemical that would incapacitate a guard dog in
order to allow CIA agents to knock out the guard dog silently,
enter an installation, and return the dog to consciousness when
leaving." 96 Sabotage of field crops was also a capability devel-
oped under MKNAOMI, but perhaps the most sensational oc-
currence was the refusal of the CIA officer in charge of the
project's shellfish toxin (approximately 11 grams, about one
third of the total world production and sufficient for tens of
thousands of lethal darts) to destroy the poison when President
Nixon so ordered in 1970. The scientist stored the toxin in a CIA
laboratory where it went unnoticed for five years. 97
The principal CIA chemical and biological program was
MKULTRA. This program, which lasted from 1953 through the
late 1960s, was concerned with "the research and development
of chemical, biological and radiological materials capable of em-
ployment in clandestine operations to control human behav-
ior." 98 Techniques included "radiation, electroshock, various
forms of psychology, psychiatry, sociology, and anthropology,
graphology, harassment substances, and paramilitary devices
and materials." 99 Testing occurred under both laboratory condi-
tions and "normal life settings" — including the administering of
drugs like LSD to unwitting subjects. At the federal drug rehabi-
litation center in Lexington, Kentucky, the CIA tested hallucin-
ogenic drugs on addicts and "as a reward for participation in the
program the addicts were provided with the drug of their addic-
274
Philip Agee
tion." 100 The widely reported death of Dr. Frank Olson, an
army scientist who committed suicide from depression eight
days after being surreptitiously given LSD by the CIA, occurred
under MKULTRA. 101 But in spite of Olson's death, the CIA
continued to give LSD to unsuspecting victims for ten more
years. Thus, in order to observe the behavior of persons after
taking the drug unwittingly, "the individual [CIA officer] con-
ducting the test might make initial contact with a prospective
subject selected at random in a bar. He would then invite the
person to a 'safe house' where the test drug was administered to
the subject through drink or in food. CIA personnel might de-
brief the individual conducting the test, or observe the test by
using a one-way mirror and tape recorder in an adjoining
room." 102 In 1973, not surprisingly, CIA Director Richard
Helms ordered that all MKULTRA documents be destroyed.
The U.S. Army also used LSD as an aid to interrogation in
projects THIRD CHANCE and DERBY HAT. One such inter-
rogation appears in the committee report as an extract from the
Army report: "Stressing techniques employed included silent
treatment before or after [LSD] administration, sustained con-
ventional interrogation prior to [LSD] interrogation, deprivation
of food, drink, sleep or bodily evacuation, sustained isolation
prior to [LSD] administration, hot-cold switches in approach,
duress 'pitches,' verbal degradation and bodily discomfort, or
dramatized threats to subject's life or mental health." 103
Another Army interrogation, this one using LSD on a sus-
pected Asian espionage agent, is equally disturbing:
At 1 120, sweating became evident, his pulse became
thready. He was placed in a supine position. He began
groaning with expiration and became semicomatose.
At 1148, responses to painful stimuli were slightly
improved.
At 1 155, he was helped to a sitting position.
At 1200, he became shocky again and was returned to
supine position.
At 1 2 1 2, he was more alert and able to sit up with help
At 1220, subject was assisted to the interrogation
table.
At 1230, he began moaning he wanted to die and
Where Do We Go From Here ?
275
usually ignored questions. Rarely he stated "he didn't
know."
At 1250, his phasic alertness persisted. He frequently
refocused his eyes with eyelid assistance. He fre-
quently threw his head back with eyes closed.
At 1330, he was slightly more alert. He was force-
walked for 5 minutes. He physically would cooperate
until he became shocky again (sweating, thready
pulse, pale).
The interrogation continued for seventeen and one-
half hours after the drug was administered. 104
Just three years earlier a staff study prepared in the Army unit
responsible for these projects discussed the moral and legal as-
pects of using LSD in interrogations: "It was always a tenet of
Army Intelligence that the basic American principle of the dig-
nity and welfare of the individual will not be violated. ... In
Intelligence, the stakes involved and the interests of national
security may permit a more tolerant interpretation of moral-
ethical values. . . . Any claim against the U.S. Government for
alleged injury due to [LSD] must be legally shown to have been
due to the material. " 105
The problem of hypocrisy attendant upon the double standard
and violation of professed principles is consistently present in
the report of the Senate committee and is alluded to in the re-
ports of the House committee, the Murphy Commission, and the
Rockefeller Commission. The Murphy Commission, for exam-
ple, concluded that new measures should be taken "to insure
that in both word and deed our own foreign policy reflects devo-
tion to high ethical standards" and "to insure that due consider-
ation is given to ethical arguments in the setting and carrying out
of policy." 108 Nevertheless, adds the report, "The ethical re-
sponsibilities that man has to man and nation to nation, where
neither recognized rights nor dramatic misfortunes are involved,
are subtle and less certain" even though they "lie close to the
heart of many current international differences [such as] arms
control and disarmament, including weapons design and strate-
gic doctrine; problems of the redistribution of wealth, including
terms of trade, and transfers of capital and technology, and food
and population policies." 107 Yet in discussing the need for the
CIA to continue covert action operations, the Murphy Commis-
Philip Agee
sion is "realistic." "But we live in the world we find, not the
world we might wish. Our adversaries deny themselves no forms
of action which might advance their interests or undercut
ours." 108
The Senate committee also found that "many covert opera-
tions appear to violate our international treaty obligations and
commitments, such as the charters of the United Nations and
the Organization of American States," 108 but it could not re-
solve this contradiction. Indeed, according to the American
Constitution, treaties once ratified become "the law of the land"
and those persons who violate treaties ought to be liable to pros-
ecution in American courts.
Despite the Constitution, the Senate and the House of Repre-
sentatives have both rejected proposals by members that would
require stricter practicing of principles. In September 1974 the
House defeated a proposal to forbid the CIA from financing
operations "for the purpose of undermining or destabilizing the
government of any foreign country." A month later the Senate
defeated a motion that "would have forbidden any agency of the
United States Government to carry out any activity within any
foreign country which violates or tends to encourage the viola-
tion of, the laws of the United States or of such countries,
except for activities 'necessary' to the security of the United
States and intended 'solely' to gather intelligence." 110
Nevertheless, the various investigating committees were es-
tablished because of gross violations by the CIA and other agen-
cies of certain American laws. Each committee adopted the
same frame of reference which with a few exceptions conven-
iently and effectively sets aside the ethical and moral considera-
tions. They limited their concerns to compliance with American
laws, not those of other countries, and to what security services
should be allowed to do to American citizens, not to foreigners.
Particularly in the report of the Senate committee, the ethical
and moral issue tends to blend into the discussion of whether
U.S. laws have been violated, not whether the U.S. government
should or should not violate its treaty obligations or other coun-
tries' laws.
The contradiction is, of course, insoluble so long as "liberal"
and "free" institutions need direction, control, and funding by
government, i.e., by the CIA. Most of the CIA's covert action
operations imply corruption of "nongovernment" institutions
which cannot seem to prosper by themselves. Thus the real
Where Do We Go From Here ?
277
principle in operation is that "free" institutions, such as foreign
electoral processes, must be made to work in favor of
"American interests." As increasingly they do not, they must be
made "unfree" by control and direction in favor of the interests
represented by the U.S. government.
By concentrating on rights of Americans and compliance with
American laws, the various reports interpose nationalism and
the liberal concept of the state in order to obscure and conceal
the national and international class interests that are the raison
d'etre for the security services and for what they do.
Even so, the revelations of domestic "abuses" are valuable as
indicators of what should be anticipated when the next round of
protest and pressures for change develops. Both the Senate
committee and the Rockefeller Commission reports show
clearly the collection of information against dissenters, peaceful
as well as violence-prone, and the use of the information to
disrupt, harass, and weaken the organizations and individuals
who were targeted. The picture emerges of an enormous covert
action program within the United States against those who
would correspond to the targets of the CIA 's destructive covert
action programs abroad, with the addition of certain liberal and
right-wing groups.
The principal agencies involved in the domestic security pro-
grams were the FBI, CIA, National Security Agency, U.S.
Army intelligence, and Internal Revenue Service. Among their
targets were "persons with 'anarchist or revolutionary beliefs'
or who were 'espousing the line of revolutionary movements,
hate organizations, rabble rousers, key activists, black national-
ists, white supremacists, agitators, key black extremists.' ""'
The sheer mass of files and investigations gives some idea of
the scope of these programs. The FBI, for example, has an
index of 58 million cards of names and organizations through
which it retrieves information contained in over 6.5 million files.
It has compiled 480,000 files from investigations of "subver-
sives" and 33,000 files from investigations of "extremists." 112
Through the SHAMROCK program of the NSA, which lasted
from 1947 to 1973, millions of telegrams were intercepted and
read. Between 1940 and 1973, 12 different letter-opening opera-
tions were conducted by the FBI and the CIA, resulting in the
illegal opening of hundreds of thousands of letters. From 1953 to
1973 the CIA screened more than 28 million letters, photo-
graphed the exteriors of 2.7 million, and opened about 215,000.
278
Philip Agee
The Internal Revenue Service targeted over 10,000 persons for
special tax examinations for political reasons. The Army, for its
part, amassed files on 100,000 Americans "encompassing virtu-
ally every group seeking peaceful change in the United
States." 113
The CIA, in its CHAOS program of disruption from 1967 to
1 974, created 10,000 files on Americans with the names of 300,-
000 Americans indexed. (The Agency's main index file in the
Directorate of Operations contains about 7.5 million names,
down from IS million a few years ago. It also has some 750,000
individual personality files.) For collection of intelligence from
American domestic sources, the CIA has another index, con-
taining about 150,000 names, and approximately 50,000 files on
"active" sources. The CIA's Office of Security has some 900,-
000 files, almost all of which relate to individuals, including 75
sitting members of Congress. It also has records on about half a
million people who have visited CIA installations, and until 1973
it maintained "extensive computer lists of approximately 300,-
000 persons who had been arrested for offenses related to
homosexuality. ' ' 114
Although the FBI had been engaged in what amounted to
covert action operations against left-wing groups in the United
States since the 1930s, the main buildup came as a result of the
civil rights and antiwar movements of the 1960s. Pressures from
Presidents Johnson and Nixon to discover the "foreign hand"
behind these movements were partly the reason, but the infor-
mation was also used in ways designed to weaken them. The
FBI's programs to infiltrate organizations continue with over
twice as much spent in 1976 on informants against "subversive"
organizations than against organized crime.
Besides asking what the different intelligence and security ser-
vices have been doing, the House and the Senate committees
also asked the question how well have the services been per-
forming. Success or failure, in this respect, depends on one's
point of view. The Senate committee report cites the CIA's
interventions in Guatemala and Iran and in Western Europe af-
ter World War II as "successful" operations, yet laments the
intervention in Chile as lacking popular support of the American
public. The breaking of American laws by the FBI, CIA, and
other services is seen as "failure" whereas the CIA's advanced
technical collection programs are considered "successful." On
the other hand, the CIA is seen to have "failed" in fulfilling its
Where Do We Go From Here?
279
original task of centralizing the intelligence collection, analysis,
and production processes of the government.
The House of Representatives committee reported a number
of dramatic "failures" of the CIA. Among these were the failure
to anticipate adequately the Tet offensive of 1968, the Czecho-
slovakian invasion by the Warsaw Pact armies, the 1973 Yom
Kippur offensive by the Egyptians and Syrians, the fall of the
fascist regime in Portugal in April 1974, the Indian nuclear ex-
plosion, and the 1974 coup against the Makarios government in
Cyprus.
One searches the reports in vain for meaningful evaluations of
the CIA's interventions to install or strengthen the current re-
pressive regimes in countries such as Indonesia, South Korea,
Iran, the Philippines, Brazil, Uruguay, Bolivia, and Chile. Al-
most nothing appears to suggest that the CIA works intimately
with the security services of these and other right-wing govern-
ments to support the torture, assassination, and other forms of
political repression prevalent in those countries. Such support
often has the effect of covert action operations because of its
impact on local political stability. In a somewhat peripheral man-
ner, the Senate committee recognizes this when it recommends
that the CIA be forbidden by law from providing support "for
police or other internal security forces which engage in the sys-
tematic violation of human rights. " n5
Such a recommendation, if enacted, would be a positive de-
velopment, but most probably the views of Senator Goldwater
will prevail. In a statement of his individual views appended to
the Senate committee report, Goldwater observed, "In some
instances it is necessary for U.S. intelligence services to cooper-
ate with the internal security forces of nations where there is
systematic violation of human rights. The purpose of such coop-
eration is to gain foreign intelligence on vital targets. In order to
gain the cooperation of the internal security forces in these
countries, support is sometimes a condition for cooperation . In a
world where the number of authoritarian regimes far outnum-
bers the number of democratic governments, such a prohibition
limits the flexibility of our intelligence services in defending
America. "* 16 Senator Goldwater might as well have been speak-
ing for the CIA, but he too failed to acknowledge that the CIA
supports political repression to weaken left-wing movements as
a goal in itself, quite apart from the support given as an induce-
ment to a local service to tap the Soviet Embassy's telephones.
280
Philip Agee
Without adequately discussing the CIA's support and promo-
tion of political repression, the Senate and House committees
fail altogether to give the American people a better understand-
ing of why a Station Chief was assassinated and why indeed the
CIA is so despised and brings so much scorn on the United
States in foreign countries. This omission should not surprise
anyone for, as with covert action operations, these activities are
needed to prevent real change — or at least to delay change as
much as possible.
Many recommendations for reorganization and stricter con-
trol of the security services are contained in the reports: the
Rockefeller Commission made 30 recommendations; the House
committee, 32; the Senate committee, 87 on foreign intelligence
and covert action and 96 on domestic intelligence. The Murphy
Commission made 14 recommendations directly relating to intel-
ligence. Practically all the recommendations are designed to
strengthen the intelligence agencies of the government by mak-
ing them more effective and keeping their operations secret. In
all of the reports, more effective congressional oversight and
control is recommended through the establishment of new intel-
ligence oversight committees to replace the current weak super-
vision by Congress. Recommendations would also prevent fu-
ture CIA law-breaking within the United States and
assassination of foreign leaders during peacetime. A number of
bureaucratic changes within the intelligence community are also
recommended, from changing the name of the CIA to FIA
(Foreign Intelligence Agency) and giving the DFI (Director of
Foreign Intelligence) an office near the White House, to abolish-
ing the Defense Intelligence Agency. The recommendations also
reflect wide agreement that the DCI's position should be
strengthened so that he can effectively coordinate the whole
national intelligence apparatus.
The Senate committee and the Rockefeller Commission rec-
ommended the enactment of legislation that would provide crim-
inal penalties for unauthorized disclosure of secret government
information, one of the measures designed to cloak the CIA in
secrecy again. If enacted, such a law would make it a crime to
leak to the press the kind of information that caused the investi-
gations in the first place.
Just how many of the various recommendations are finally
adopted will depend in part on the Congress. President Ford, in
February 1976, provided by Executive Order for a number of
Where Do We Go From Here?
281
reforms and recommended others to the Congress for legisla-
tion, including the secrets act. 117 The main feature of the Ford
reforms is that they add and change names but little else. Covert
action, for example, now becomes "special activities." A new
Committee of Foreign Intelligence chaired by the DCI is estab-
lished in the National Security Council in order to improve man-
agement and budgeting of the intelligence activities. The Forty
Committee that previously was supposed to review and approve
sensitive and expensive covert action projects is replaced by an
Operations Advisory Group and upgraded to include the Secre-
taries of State and Defense rather than their deputies. The DCI
receives more power and in effect may become a strong director
of the entire intelligence community, with the assistance of a
new Deputy Director for the Intelligence Community. A new
Intelligence Oversight Board, closely aligned with the Inspec-
tors General of the intelligence agencies, will presumably detect
possible "abuses" before they get out of hand.
Political assassination is declared prohibited, but other forms
of covert action continue. The CIA's domestic activities are
indeed curtailed, but exceptions to new rules governing the FBI
would still allow for penetration and disruption of certain do-
mestic organizations (those composed primarily of non-United
States persons) by this agency. Nevertheless, President Ford
asked the Congress for new legal authority for mail intercept
operations and for repeal of the requirement that he advise the
six congressional subcommittees of all covert action operations.
Instead, only the new intelligence oversight committees would
be kept informed, and to some extent the doctrine of "plausible
denial" might return.
How, then, should we view these past few years? Does the
continuation of the CIA 's covert action operations abroad imply
a defeat of those opposed to secret American intervention and
support to political repression abroad? Does continuation of the
FBI's collection of intelligence on left organizations inside the
country also amount to defeat?
I believe the revelations of the past few years constitute a
great popular victory, even when weighed against the absence of
effective reforms. In the first place, popular movements have
gained a huge body of knowledge concerning the methods and
specific operations of the institutions of counterrevolution. Ob-
viously, one must know how these institutions operate in order
to anticipate their moves and defeat them. Second, the revela-
282
Philip Agee
tions served to continue the alienation process, probably in fact
to hasten the legitimacy crisis that everyday is separating more
and more people from the government and traditional institu-
tions. What better subject could be found to demonstrate hypoc-
risy, corruption, and the ways in which the government in gen-
eral tends to serve privileged, minority interests? Third, the
revelations, especially those relating to Chile, demonstrate more
clearly than ever how the activities of the CIA are tailored to
meet the security needs of American-based multinational com-
panies. Much of the CIA's operational program in foreign coun-
tries, particularly in the Third World, can now be seen as de-
signed to promote optimum operating conditions for these
companies. Fourth, the revelations and investigations demon-
strate once again what is best in the American system: separa-
tion of powers, free flow of information, checks and balances,
need for protection of the individual from oppression by govern-
ment bureaucracy. Fifth, the lack of meaningful reforms demon-
strates the limits of the liberal reform process. Those who may
have hoped for abolishment of the CIA or of covert action oper-
ations may well reconsider whether they may have been putting
the cart before the horse. Only after power is taken away from
the owners, managers, and their politicians can their instruments
of repression be dismantled. After all, the law that established
the CIA was based in large part on recommendations made by a
New York investment broker. 118
The revelations, scandals, investigations, recommendations,
and reforms are also an integral part of developments in other
countries: in Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Mozambique, Angola,
Guinea-Bissau ; also in Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Indonesia, Iran,
and Zaire. The investigations may have been a ruling-class affair
in the United States, but they are also a contribution to libera-
tion movements everywhere because they are so instructive on
the techniques and institutions of counterrevolution. Taken in
the international context, these events constitute still one more
important, yet partial, victory for ordinary people.
There is no reason for paranoia on the part of those who reject
and resist. The siege mentality is theirs as they try to hold onto
each piece of territory for exploitation of resources and cheap
labor. Yet no one can deny that socialism is advancing from
region to region and from year to year. As for the CIA, those of
us who are able should continue to make every effort to expose
who they are and what they are doing in order to reduce their
effectiveness and to hold them up to ridicule and scorn.
Where Do We Go From Here?
283
In June 1976 1 spoke at an alternative Bicentennial celebration
in Copenhagen. Also speaking was a representative of the Cher-
okee people of North Carolina. He described how fatuous the
celebration of 200 years of conquest and exploitation was, since
his people had been in America for some 25,000 years. He also
described how Native Americans were marching across the
country from the Pacific to the Atlantic coast. When on July 4,
1976, the candles were lit on the two-hundredth birthday cake of
the United States, the Native Americans, he said, would be
there to blow them out. This attitude, the exposures of secret
intervention and repression, and the continuing growth of popu-
lar movements in the United States are the real reasons for
celebrating the Bicentennial.
Notes
1. Final Report, Book I, Foreign and Military Intelligence, United States
Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelli-
gence Activities, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C.. April 26, 1976. p.
340.
2. Ibid., p. 17.
3. Report of the House Select Committee on Intelligence, Ninety-fourth Con-
gress, as published in Village Voice, New York City, February 16, 1976, p. 72.
4. Ibid., p. 72.
5. Final Report. Book I, Foreign and Military Intelligence, op. cit.. p. 470.
6. Ibid., p. 333.
7. Ibid.
8. /tod.. 319.
9. /tod., p. 337.
10. /tod., p. 348.
1 1 . Report of the Commission on the Organization of the Government for the
Conduct of Foreign Policy [Murphy Commission], U.S. Government Printing Office,
Washington, D.C., June 1975, p. 98.
12. Final Report, Book I, Foreign and Military Intelligence, op. cit., p. 344.
13. /tod , p. 437.
14. Report of the House Select Committee on Intelligence, op. cit., February
16, 1976, p. 74.
15. Ibid., p. 74, and footnote, p. 75.
16. Report of the Commission on the Organization of the Government for the
Conduct of Foreign Policy, op. cit., p. 100.
17. Report of the House Select Committee on Intelligence, op. cit., February
16, 1976, p. 83.
18. Final Report, Book I, Foreign and Military Intelligence, op. cit., p. 141.
19. Ibid., p. 131.
20. Ibid. , footnote, p. 45.
21. Ibid , p. 131.
22. /bid . p. 19.
23. Ibid., p. 22.
24. Ibid., p. 105.
25. Ibid . p. 144.
26. Ibid.
284
Philip Agee
27. Ibid. , footnote, p. 105.
28. Ibid., p. 9.
29. Ibid., p. 145.
30. Ibid., p. 146.
31. Ibid . p. 153.
32. Ibid., p. 445.
33. Ibid., p. 148.
34. Ibid., p. 123.
35 Ibid., p. 148.
36. Report of the House Select Committee on Intelligence, op. cit., February
16, 1976, p. 84.
37. Ibid.
38. Final Report, Book I, Foreign and Military Intelligence, op. cit., p. 183.
39. Ibid., p. 155.
40. Report of the House Select Committee on Intelligence, op. cit.. February
16, 1976. p. 84.
41. Final Report, Book I, Foreign and Military Intelligence, op. cit., p. 453.
42 Ibid., p. 193.
43. Ibid., p. 454.
44. Ibid. p. 455.
45. Ibid.
46. Ibid., p. 200.
47. /W</.,p.202.
48. Report of the House Select Committee on Intelligence, op. cit., February
16, 1976, p. 84.
49. Final Report, Book L Foreign and Military Intelligence, op. cit., p. 183.
50. Ibid., p. 188.
51. Ibid , p. 452.
52. Ibid., p. 24.
53. Ibid., p. 155.
54. Ibid., p. 156.
55. Report of the House Select Committee on Intelligence, op. cit., February
16, 1976, p. 84.
56. /hid., p. 85.
57. Ibid.
58. Ibid.
59. Ibid.
60. Ibid., p. 87.
61. Ibid., p. 85.
62. Ibid.
63. Ibid., p. 88.
64. /hid., p. 85.
65. Covert Action in Chile, Staff Report of the United States Senate Select
Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities,
U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C., April 26, 1976.
66. Report of the House Select Committee on Intelligence, op. cit., February
16. 1976. pp. 84-85.
67. Ibid., p. 71.
68. Ibid.. p. 87.
69. International Herald Tribune. Paris. October 6, 1975, p. 2.
70. Final Report, Book I, Foreign and Military Intelligence, op. cit., p. 445.
71. Ibid.
72. Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders, an Interim Report
of the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence
Where Do We Go From Here?
285
Activities, United States Senate, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C.,
November 20, 1975.
73. Ibid., p. 49.
74. Ibid., pp. 13-14.
75. Ibid., pp. 13. 13f.
76. Ibid., p. 48.
77. Ibid., p. 49.
78. Ibid.
79. Ibid.
80. Ibid., p. 50.
81. Ibid., p. 51.
82. Ibid., p. 71.
83. Ibid., p. 72.
84. Ibid., p. 73.
85. Ibid., p. 191.
86. Ibid.
87. Ibid.
88. Ibid., p. 5.
89. Ibid.
90. Ibid.
91. Ibid., p. 182.
92. Final Report, Book I, Foreign and Military Intelligence, op. dr., p. 471.
93. Ibid., p. 387.
94. Ibid., pp. 387-388,
95. Ibid . p. 388.
96. Ibid., p. 361.
97. Ibid , pp. 362. 389.
98. Ibid., p. 389.
99. Ibid., p. 390.
100. Ibid., p. 391.
101. Ibid., p. 394.
102. Ibid., p. 400.
103. Ibid., p. 415.
104. Ibid . pp. 415-416.
105. Ibid., pp. 416-417.
106. Report of the Commission on the Organization of the Government for the
Conduct of Foreign Policy [Murphy Commission], op. dr., p. 113.
107. Ibid., p. 114.
108. Ibid., p. 100.
109. Final Report, Book I. Foreign and Military Intelligence, op. dr., p. 142.
110. Ibid . p. 502.
111. Final Report, Book II, Intelligence Activities and the Rights of Ameri-
cans. United States Senate Select Committee, op. t il., p. 166.
1 12. Ibid., p. 167.
113. Ibid.
1 14. Report to the President by the Commission on CIA Activities within the
United States[RockefellerCommission], U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington,
D.C.. June 1975, p. 249.
I IS. Final Report, Book I, Foreign and Military Intelligence, op. dr., p. 448.
116. Ibid., p. 590.
117. Presidential Executive Order No. 11905. The While House, February 18.
1976.
1 18. Final Report, Book I, Foreign and Military Intelligence, op. lit., p. 21.
The Deportations of
Philip Agee
by Phil Kelly
The deportations from Britain of Philip Agee and Mark Hosen-
ball were another blot on the much bespattered reputation that
Britain once held as a haven for refugees. It is a reputation
which should long ago have been lost. Once, we allowed Karl
Marx to live in London and work at the British Museum. But
Britain's Interior Ministry — the "Home Office" — and the police
kept a close watch on this German revolutionary and his friends.
Marx was allowed to stay because the Government of the day
reckoned he would cause more trouble for Imperial Germany
than for Imperial Britain.
Strict self-interest has guided the British state when deciding
on which foreigners might be graciously allowed to live here.
Those unwelcome have been thrown out — deported in some
[This article was written for this book. Some of the material
on the British deportation appeared in The Leveller in Lon-
don, in mid- 1977.]
2X6
The Deportations of Philip Agee
287
cases to their deaths. In the nineteenth century, Marx was ac-
cepted. In the twentieth, Trotsky was not. Nigerian Chief An-
thony Enahoro was handed back to his political opponents and
executed. Two officers concerned in a plot against the autocratic
King Hassan of Morocco were likewise handed over to their
deaths. German student leader Rudi Dutschke was thrown out
after the Special Branch discovered that he had actually spoken
to some British socialists. Hundreds who fled from the Turkish
invasion of Cyprus are being forced back to the island to live in
over-crowded refugee camps. A former Home Office minister,
Alex Lyon, has revealed that Chilean refugees applying to come
to Britain were vetoed by the British security services, who
checked with the CIA, who in turn asked their friends in the
DIN A, the Chilean secret police.
Philip Agee arrived in Britain in 1972, and was allowed in by a
Conservative Government. He lived in Britain for four years
before a Labour Home Secretary decided that he was a danger
to national security. When he arrived, his book. Inside the Com-
pany: CIA Diary, was little more than a manuscript. Even when
it became clear that Penguin Books was to publish it, the book
was after all, only about Latin America, where there are few
British business interests to protect.
With the publication, things changed. At the end of 1974,
Philip Agee's name was brought to the attention of the British
public. In a short time, he made it clear that he was available to
help anyone who wanted to work against the CIA. By helping in
naming agents, by recounting his experiences on public plat-
forms not only in Britain but throughout Europe and further
afield, he drew attention to the activities of the secret police of
American imperialism.
To his homes near Truro and in Cambridge came sackfuls of
correspondence and many visitors seeking advice on how the
CIA had manipulated and penetrated organizations and the polit-
ical life of their own countries.
Independently, Mark Hosenball and I had started working on
the names of CIA officers under diplomatic cover in the London
Embassy, and we naturally approached Agee. Early in 1975, I
met him for the first time. Apart from one or two who had been
stationed in Latin America with him, it was not he who named
the names. But he was an invaluable source of help on the struc-
ture of the CIA. He had never worked on joint operations with
288
Phil Kelly
the British security services, and so knew next to nothing about
the CIA's liaison with them. It is easy, however, to ascertain
that this has been and still is extensive.
While the names were published in the London weekly enter-
tainment and politics magazine Time Out, the rest of the press
showed a cold indifference. Other left-wing papers also pub-
lished the name.s, but one journalist for a national daily — the
liberal Guardian — had his story spiked in front of his eyes.
"These men, "said the editor, "are our friends."
This was also the attitude of the British Government. Harold
Wilson, then Prime Minister, told Parliament in answer to ques-
tions on the CIA's role here that they were here "with the
knowledge and consent of Her Majesty's Government." More
than 70 CIA personnel work under diplomatic cover in the huge
U.S. Embassy in Grosvenor Square in London's fashionable
Mayfair district. Naming their names was unspectacular but es-
sential work in tracing the influence they have on the political
life of Britain.
Other work consisted of tracing forward old "front" organi-
zations of the CIA. Time and time again we found that opera-
tions which had been exposed — particularly in the media and
cultural matters — simply carried on slightly altered, even with
the same personnel. Perhaps the greatest coup was the closure
of the CIA-front "news agency," Forum World Features, which
hurriedly pulled down the shutters in 1976, just as an article
appeared in Time Out. True to form, however, its successor
organization, the Institute for the Study of Conflict, continued to
function. The revelations were greeted with cold fury by the
right-wingers doing the CIA's work, but there was apparently
little they could do.
Philip Agee confined his advice to matters within his personal
experience. But from a small circle of journalists and research-
ers emanated stories not only about the CIA, but about the
British intelligence services. It was natural that those British
journalists interested in the CIA were also investigating Britain's
counterpart, the Secret Intelligence Service, SIS, also known as
MI6, and the the Security Service, the internal security service,
also known as MIS.
On the CIA, Agee was an untiring guide and counsellor on
possible avenues for research, and most importantly, on the
political motives of the Agency. This was strictly limited to mat-
ters within his own competence, which did not include British
agencies.
The Deportations o f Philip Agee
289
As Philip Agee's work against the CIA became more widely
known, and the activities of the CIA became a part of regular
news coverage, it seemed more rather than less likely that he
would be allowed to stay. He clearly took no interest in British
security matters, and writing about the CIA had become a re-
spectable journalistic activity.
When the deportation orders came in November 1976, they
were unexpected. And the allegations, against Agee and Mark
Hosenball, claimed that they had damaged British interests.
Agee was accused of maintaining regular contacts harmful to the
United Kingdom with foreign intelligence officers; the Home
Office further claimed that he had been and continued to be
involved in disseminating information harmful to the security of
the United Kingdom, and had aided and counselled others in
obtaining for publication information which could be harmful to
the security of the United Kingdom.
Hosenball was alleged to have sought to obtain and to have
obtained, for publication, information harmful to the security of
the United Kingdom, including information prejudicial to the
safety of servants of the crown.
The political climate in which these allegations arose was the
sharp drift to the right which had occurred after Prime Minister
Harold Wilson resigned in March 1975. Wilson, who later also
criticized Britain's security services, was no progressive. But
his successor James Callaghan was a man of the Labour Party's
traditional right. In September 1976, Home Secretary Roy Jen-
kins resigned to become President of the European Commission.
Jenkins was also on the right of the Party, but regarded as liberal
on such issues as race and immigration, and "civil liberties"
matters. More liberal, that is, than his successor, Merlyn Rees.
Rees is a man of no great talent or achievement, and has risen in
the Labour Party because of relatively mindless devotion to its
"apparat." He was, significantly enough. Northern Ireland Min-
ister before Callaghan appointed him to the Home Office. In
Ulster, close collaboration with, and reliance on, the security
services was essential. This habit he appears to have carried
with him into his new task. Certainly, neither Agee nor Hosen-
ball had done anything significantly different in their work be-
tween Jenkins' resignation and Rees' decision to order their
deportations.
In the next seven months, as they fought the deportations,
neither man ever officially discovered any more details of what
was behind them. But some details leaked out. It seems clear
290
Phil Kelly
that the cases, while distinct, were linked. The CIA had prob-
ably been pressuring the British to curtail Agee's activities for
some time: that much was made clear by -a former senior CIA
"dirty tricks" man, James Angleton. But the British Secret In-
telligence Service could not convince a minister that the CIA's
reasons were sufficient grounds for the British Government to
act.
The close relationship between SIS and the CIA is well
known. It seems that Agee, while never intending to do anything
to damage British security interests, was more or less bound to
do so in the end. It was his trip to Jamaica, in September 1976,
which trod on British toes. Agee went to Jamaica to expose the
CIA-backed campaign of destabilization against the moderate
social-democratic government of Michael Manley. Manley had
committed the cardinal sin, in American eyes, of being too
friendly with Cuba. Jamaican politics, in which the gun has al-
ways played a role, had erupted into violent confrontation.
On the invitation of several Jamaican groups, Agee went to
the island, and helped in the naming of nine CIA officers active
in the destabilization campaign. Several had experience in simi-
lar activities elsewhere in Latin America. It now seems clear
that the British intelligence services were also involved in the
actions against Manley. This is not surprising, as Jamaica is a
former British colony, and still a Commonwealth country.
The Jamaica visit seems to have been the bait with which the
security services hooked Rees: it was characterized as clear
evidence that Agee's activities were harmful to Britain's world-
wide interests as well as those of the U.S. As far as Agee, his
friends and lawyers could ever ascertain, it was MI6 which
pushed the deportation recommendation on to the Home Office,
which duly complied.
Hosenball, on the other hand, appears to have offended the
British internal security service, MIS. Five thousand strong,
MIS was created as a counter-espionage organization before
World War I, as hysteria swept the country over a rumored
invasion of German spies. Over the last few years, it has con-
centrated increasingly on left-wing activity in politics and the
trade unions, all of which is entirely British in origin, and totally
legal.
MIS officers are civilians, though the service is structured on
military lines, with military ranks. They operate in total clandes-
tinity and have no powers of arrest. When, as a result of their
The Deportations of Philip Agee
291
surveillance and other activities, MIS officers wish to make an
arrest, they call in their "errand boys" — officers of the police
Special Branch — to make arrests.
Hosenball was an indefatigable enquirer into areas which the
British press ignores. In May 1976, he was co-author with jour-
nalist Duncan Campbell of an article in Time Out, entitled "The
Eavesdroppers," which dealt with the technical ability of the
U.S., Britain and their allies to intercept commercial diplomatic
and military telecommunications traffic. This article attracted
the attention of the authorities: one person extensively quoted in
it, U.S. writer Winslow Peck, was denied entry to Britain at the
end of June 1976.
The authorities took their time. They were clearly not ready to
move in July, when Hosenball moved from Time Out to the
conservative London Evening Standard newspaper, for the con-
ditions of his work permit were altered to allow him to take the
job.
The deportations came like a bolt from the blue. A hastily-
convened "Agee-Hosenball Defence Committee" met in the
offices of the National Council for Civil Liberties, and a cam-
paign was hurriedly organized. Friends and colleagues of the
two men gathered and began making plans to publicize the
cases. Both men were offered by the Home Secretary the oppor-
tunity to "make representations" against the deportations be-
fore a three-person panel appointed by him. Both decided to
take that opportunity.
Philip Agee, with the support of the Defence Committee, de-
cided to make the deportation a public issue. Hosenball took a
different view. He had done fewer stories about American and
British espionage.. The British press is hackled by the Official
Secrets Act, which forbids publication of most information
about the workings of government, and especially the activities
of the military and secret organizations. It wears these shackles
voluntarily, operating the D-notice system, under which a com-
mittee of media owners and managers liaise with civil servants
and military personnel, deciding which stories to suppress. Thir-
teen standing instructions on types of stories which must be
suppressed are in the desks of all British newspaper editors.
Hosenball had no chance to do such stories on the Standard.
But he still maintained his interest — in the extreme right, and
into South African secret service activity in Britain. Sir Harold
Wilson was hinting to several people that the South Africans
Phil Kelly
were active in Britain, and that a disaffected right-wing clique
inside Britain's security service was also working actively
against the Labour Government, and Hosenball knew of these
hints. This story has broken since. One other story, about cor-
ruption allegations concerning a minister, has also broken into
the open.
The cases were linked. If nothing else, it was a clear attack on
journalists working in areas which the Establishment found un-
comfortable. But the effort to run a united campaign was sabo-
taged by the management of the Evening Standard. Hosenball
was told not to approach the Defence Committee, and to have
nothing to do with its campaign. He was faced with an unpleas-
ant choice. Virtually everyone he knew urged him to join Philip
Agee in a public campaign, which would have exposed the dan-
gerous stupidity of the deportations, and would have focused on
the hidden role of the security services. The management of the
Standard wanted no part of this, and he was told that unless he
played it their way, he would have no money to finance his legal
advice, and that he would lose his job. Without a job, he would
have no right to stay in Britain anyway.
The two were allowed to present their appeals to a three-
person panel appointed by Merlyn Rees, of which more later. It
was no trial, but the lawyer chosen for Hosenball by his employ-
ers had a record of stiff opposition to political activity around a
trial — "Defence Committees" and the like. Many of Hosen-
ball's friends felt that if they were not lawyers or Members of
Parliament, there was nothing they could do. Most people real-
ized that though Hosenball's deportation was a scandal, it was
against Agee that the authorities bore the major grudge.
Hosenball withdrew from contact with his old friends for al-
most the whole seven months. The Committee continued to use
his name, because it was also against his deportation. But he —
and the Standard's management — campaigned separately, ap-
proaching Members of Parliament on his behalf alone, and so
on. This much must have been evident to the Home Office,
which was carefully monitoring the reaction to its decision.
The Evening Standard in fact served Mark very badly. After
splashing his case for a couple of days, it then gave little promin-
ence. It never mentioned Defence Committee activity. The pro-
prietors of a conservative newspaper had no wish to illuminate
the deep-rooted illiberality of the British system. Indeed, Eve-
ning Standard Chairperson Charles Wintour was made a Com-
The Deportations of Philip Agee
293
panion of the Most Honourable Order of the British Empire in
1977, ' 'for services to journalism. ' '
In fact, of the national dailies, only the liberal Guardian was
sympathetic to the campaign against the deportations. As De-
fence Committee activities expanded, more and more organiza-
tions expressed their opposition to the deportations. But skilled
news management by the Government kept the spectre of na-
tional security ever present. Whispers from Ministers to senior
MPs were used: Liberal Party leader David Steel was told that
Agee was responsible for the death of two British agents. Edi-
tors of several papers, attending a reception at Downing Street,
the Prime Minister's home, were told that the deportations were
no threat to press freedom, or to journalists who stuck to the
traditional areas, were assured that national security really was
at stake, and were asked to play down the deportations. The
BBC was similarly asked to play things down. A directive went
out that Agee was only to be interviewed if the interview was
cleared by senior management. Right-wing newspapers ap-
peared with all sorts of stories blaming Agee for the death of a
Western agent in Poland, claiming that he was an agent of the
KGB or Cuban intelligence.
The Defence Committee adopted a dual approach. Firstly, it
attacked the procedure under which the two men were conde-
scendingly allowed to "make representations" against the Rees
decision. Secondly, it attacked the myth of national security —
that is, that there exist interests which all sections of the nation
have in common, which are above political debate and which are
not to be drawn into the political arena. Secret activities, which
go on under the cloak of national security, are self-justifying.
Because they are secret, no one knows about them. Because no
one knows about them, they cannot be discussed, and because
they cannot be discussed, they remain secret. To lift the veil
even to inquire, without making judgments, is already to be
disloyal as a citizen, and a threat if one is an alien.
Secret activities — particularly covert action in foreign coun-
tries — are as much the task of the world's intelligence services
as the gathering of information. To hammer this message home,
the Defence Committee produced thousands of copies of pam-
phlets, and tens of thousands of leaflets from its temporary
headquarters at the NCCL's office. The Home Office was pick-
eted regularly.
Philip Agee himself played a major part in the defense cam-
294
Phil Kelly
paign. In contrast to Hosenball's silence, he was constantly
making statements, giving detailed press interviews, and speak-
ing at public meetings, keeping up an impressive pace which
inevitably took its toll. On November 30, the first London public
meeting was held, with Judith Hart, MP, a leading Labour Party
member, Ian Mikardo, MP, Alan Sapper of the film and TV
technicians union, and historian E.P. Thompson. By mid-Febru-
ary, Agee had spoken at the National Union of Students confer-
ence in Blackpool, and in Glasgow, Newcastle, Birmingham,
Brighton, Bristol, Coventry, Manchester, Cambridge, Swansea,
and Cardiff, in addition to London.
Philip Agee had directed his education campaign on the CIA
towards the labor movements of various countries. The labor
movement had the most to gain from a campaign against covert
action by intelligence agencies, action which is so often directed
against labor, democratic and progressive organizations. So the
Defence Committee concentrated on the trade unions and the
Labour Party.
Early in the campaign, spontaneous support for Agee and
Hosenball in the labor movement manifested itself in a surpris-
ing fashion. Shortly after the deportations were announced, the
Labour Party, with the Trades Union Congress, held a rally and
march against racism. This in itself was an unusual occurrence:
the Labour Party and the TUC take to the streets with reluc-
tance. Demonstrations are the specialty of left-wing political
groups, or of trade unionists or others with a specific grievance.
A handful of Agee's supporters formed the main part of the
National Union of Journalists contingent on the march.
Merlyn Rees was speaking. It had been decided that the pres-
ence of the Defence Committee, and the leaflets distributed to
marchers, would be sufficient. There was to be no heckling of
Rees. In Trafalgar Square, Rees took his turn in the speaking
order. While the other speakers had been heard in respectful
silence, a few started to shout. The majority of demonstrators
took up the chant — "Merlyn Rees, CIA; Agee, Hosenball must
stay ." Rees was drowned out: not a word was heard.
The appeal against the deportations was under a singular pro-
cedure without parallel anywhere in the Western world. Al-
though they were told no details of the charges against them and
not one jot of the evidence, Agee and Hosenball were allowed
to "make representations" against their deportations. These
The Deportations o f Philip Agee
295
"representations" were to be heard by a panel of three men,
appointed by the Home Secretary. This procedure was invented
by the then Conservative Home Secretary, Reginald Maudling,
in 1971, after the deportation of the partially-invalid German
student leader Rudi Dutschke. Dutschke was in Britain for medi-
cal treatment after a right-wing assassination attempt, and was
alleged to have broken the conditions of his stay by meeting
political activists. This hearing was embarrassingly public, and it
became clear that police Special Branch evidence of his contacts
was gained by telephone tapping and mail opening.
Maudling, in introducing the Conservative Party's 1971 Immi-
gration Act, invented the panel procedure, under which those
recommended for deportation "by reasons of national security"
would be given only a statement of the allegations against them,
but would have no chance to confront their accusers. Both Agee
and Hosenball prepared long statements, but as Agee said, it
was a question of looking back over every detail of four years'
residence in Britain, looking for details which could have ap-
peared suspicious, and explaining them. The accused and their
lawyers were forced to become prosecutors in their own cases.
The panel of three — the "silent knights," as they were dubbed
— were Sir Derek Hilton, Chairman of the Immigration Appeals
Tribunal, which hears the more normal appeals under the 1971
Act; Sir Clifford Jarrett, and Sir Richard Hay ward. Hilton was in
the Special Operations Executive (SOE) during the war, Brit-
ain's own dirty tricks outfit, the forerunner of the OSS and the
CIA. Jarrett was a career civil servant who ended up as Perma-
nent Secretary of the Admiralty, Britain's Navy Department.
Hayward was a full-time official of the Union of Postal Workers
(UPW), whose union was affiliated to the PTTI, one of the
"trade secretariats" heavily infiltrated by the CIA. Later, he
joined the Post Office Board, and the Union deprived him of his
honorary membership because of his conduct during a national
postal strike in 1971. All three men could be relied on to place
considerations of "national security" above respect for free
enquiry.
The panel refused all requests from Agee's lawyer Larry
Grant to provide more details of the charges, or to open up the
tribunal proceedings. The atmosphere of secrecy was calculated
to help the Government's case in the public relations battle to
convince public opinion that Agee and Hosenball were indeed
security risks.
296
Phil Kelly
Hosenball, in keeping with his low-key campaign, meekly
obeyed the requirements of secrecy. Agee and his supporters,
on the other hand, determined to report every aspect of the
proceedings to the press and the world, and this was duly done
at press conferences after each session.
Agee's witnesses included Members of Parliament Stan New-
ens, Judith Hart and Alex Lyon, the latter two both former
government ministers; National Union of Journalists' General
Secretary Ken Morgan; Neil Middleton of Agee's publisher.
Penguin Books; Tom Culver, the British representative of the
American Civil Liberties Union ; and journalists Martin Walker,
Stuart Tendler and Christopher Roper. Agee was allowed an
adjournment until February and produced as further witnesses
Ramsey Clark, formerly Lyndon Johnson's Attorney General;
Sean MacBride, the UN High Commissioner for Namibia and
Nobel Peace Prize winner; Melvin Wulf of the ACLU; Morton
Halperin, formerly aide to Henry Kissinger; and Alvaro Buns-
ter, Chilean Ambassador to Britain during the Popular Unity
period.
Hosenball put together an equally impressive list of support-
ers, including journalist Duncan Campbell, who told the panel
that he had written most of the controversial "Eavesdroppers"
article, and MP Paul Rose, who explained the investigations
which he and Hosenball had been involved in to expose the
activities of the ultra right in Britain, and their international
links.
The Defence Committee concentrated its efforts on working
up a public campaign on behalf of the two men. Normally, to
gear up British political parties and trade unions takes months.
The Defence Committee had no idea how much time was avail-
able for campaigning, but nevertheless managed to persuade the
executives or top officials of many major unions to protest
against either the procedure or the deportations themselves.
Much assistance came from the men's own Union, the NUJ. But
the protesters included the Transport and General Workers' Un-
ion, the National Union of Railwaymen, and leaders of twenty
major unions. The TUC General Council, on which "mod-
erates" have a majority, was persuaded to send its General Sec-
retary, Len Murray, to see Rees. But the General Council only
"noted" his report of the Home Secretary's account of the
problems which he faced in "national security matters."
Hundreds of local trade union branches protested, as did local
The Deportations o f Philip Agee
297
Labour and Liberal parties, and left groups. The National Exec-
utive Committee of the Labour Party protested, but the Govern-
ment disregarded it; there is no formal control by the National
Executive over a Labour Government in office.
In Parliament, a succession of "Early Day motions" kept the
issue alive during the campaign. Early Day motions are expres-
sions of MPs' opinions: more than ISO signed various motions
condemning the treatment of Agee and Hosenball. Several dele-
gations of MPs called on Rees.
Most of the activity came from MPs in the center and on the
left of the Labour Party. The Conservatives and the Labour
right would rather not concern themselves with matters which
the Government of the day chooses to designate as concerning
"national security." The Liberal Party was apprehensive about
the procedures, but Prime Minister Callaghan used his personal
friendship with Liberal leader David Steel to assure him that
Agee and Hosenball really were risks. Steel shut up.
Rees promised Parliamentary debate after he had considered
the panel's verdicts on the two. But dramatic events intervened.
In February 1977, on the day that Rees announced his deci-
sion to uphold the deportations. Special Branch officers
swooped down on three supporters of the Defence Committee
and arrested them.
Two of the three were journalists; Duncan Campbell who had
co-authored the "Eavesdroppers" article with Mark Hosenball,
and Crispin Aubrey, a staff reporter with Time Out. and an
active member of the Defence Committee. The third man, John
Berry, was a former corporal in the Royal Corps of Signals, the
British Army regiment which provides the personnel for, among
other things, Britain's extensive technical intelligence network.
He had approached the Defence Committee because he wanted
to draw attention to the extent to which Britain was involved in
secret surveillance, and the extent to which Britain's surveil-
lance organization, Government Communications Headquar-
ters, or GCHQ, was under the control of its U.S. equivalent, the
National Security Agency (NSA).
Although Special Branch detectives carried out the arrests, at
John Berry's London home, they were acting, as they often do,
as the errand boys for MIS. Remarks made by the police officers
made it clear that they had been alerted to the meeting between
the three men only a short time before it happened. It had been
arranged on the telephone, after John Berry had made his initial
298
Phil Kelly
contact with the Defence Committee by letter. Only by listening
to telephone conversations or opening mail could MI5 have
known about the meeting. The arrests followed a number of still-
unexplained incidents of break-ins and disappearances of items
in the homes and cars of Defence Committee members.
The three men were held in a police station for 48 hours,
denied any access to a lawyer. During this time, the homes of
Duncan Campbell and Crispin Aubrey were searched, and ex-
tensive journalistic files — relating to quite different matters —
were removed. The men were charged under the Official Secrets
Act, and at first were refused bail, though this was later granted.
British newspapers are much more circumspect about cases
before the courts than the U.S. press. This is supposed to pro-
tect the defendant. But in a patently political case like the arrests
of Aubrey, Berry and Campbell — the ABC case, as it has be-
come known — it has inhibited them from publishing the repeated
assertions of those connected with the Agee-Hosenball Defence
Committee, and the rapidly-formed ABC Defence Committee,
that this was an astute political move on the part of the security
services. It was meant to serve as a further deterrent, first to
those like John Berry who wanted, like Philip Agee, to reveal
part of the inside story of security organizations, and second to
those journalists like Mark Hosenball who were willing to write
about it.
The sub judice rule operates in such cases to the benefit of the
police: the impression to be gained from the media is that
"there's no smoke without fire."
There is an acceptance among a broad section of public opin-
ion in England that the security authorities do not move without
reason, and a preparedness to trust the Government on matters
which it chooses to refer to as affecting "national security."
This distinguishes British politics sharply from post-Watergate
America. As a result of the deportations of Agee and Hosenball,
and the continuing campaign for Aubrey, Berry, and Campbell,
this trust is beginning to wear thin. But there is not the same
spirit of enquiry among the British press as the American. The
carrot of the lobby system, a most efficient news management
tool, and the stick of the Official Secrets Act with its voluntary
counterpart, the D-notice system, has fattened the British press
into a dangerous complacency.
Agee challenged the deportation decision in the Scottish
courts, and Hosenball in the English. Scotland's separate legal
The Deportations of Philip Agee
299
system didn't save Agee: the judges ruled that as far as immigra-
tion matters were concerned, Merlyn Rees had jurisdiction in
Scotland too. Hosenball had no better luck. Lord Denning, Mas-
ter of the Rolls and President of the Appeal Court, told him that
"in matters of national security, natural justice may have to take
a back seat." In no court was it possible to question Rees 1
motives, or the evidence on which he reached his decision. All
the judges were interested in was whether he was legally entitled
to order the deportation, and it was clear that he was. Appeals to
the European Court of Human Rights at Strasbourg failed also,
because the court held that the right to trial and to hear the
evidence against one applied only to citizens. Former U.S. At-
torney-General Ramsey Clark described the panel procedure as
"lawless," but the British seemed not to know who he was.
The speeches, the public meetings, the marches, went on. The
final episode was the Parliamentary debate in May 1977, post-
poned several times because of the court appeals. Former Home
Office Minister Alex Lyon demolished official arguments about
the procedure adopted; Stan Newens for Agee, and Paul Rose
for Hosenball paid tribute to the work the two men had done;
Tory rightwinger Stephen Hastings quoted several libelous alle-
gations about Philip Agee from an obscure right-wing publica-
tion; and Merlyn Rees summed up, claiming yet again that the
decision had been his, that he had not been influenced, that the
national security of the country was at stake. The Government
won the vote, with a motley collection of the Labour right,
Tories and Liberals against the Labour left and one Welsh na-
tionalist, a voting pattern which is far from abnormal in Parlia-
ment these days. At the beginning of June, Hosenball and his
new wife departed for the United States, and Agee left for Hol-
land on the cross-channel car ferry.
His problems were far from over. Agee's friend Angela Seixas
remained in Britain, to clear up their affairs and to try to sell
their house in Cambridge. Agee visited several countries, decid-
ing eventually that his work would be best continued in France.
Having stayed there six weeks, he went to Boulogne in August
to meet Ms. Seixas, arriving on the channel ferry. The Border
Police, with agents of the internal security service DST, kid-
napped him and pushed him over the border.
Back in Holland, Agee learned in November that the Dutch
Government was not willing to let him stay. They cited a letter
he had written to a British left-wing magazine The Leveller, and
300
Phil Kelly
his intention to compile a list of all those people and organiza-
tions which had worked for the CIA.
Misrepresentation was piled again on smear. Early allegations
from Holland's justice ministry to his lawyers claimed that
Agee's activities "could" endanger Holland's relationship with
other countries. As time went by, the "could" became
"would."
A similar legal and political defense campaign was mounted in
Holland, with the trade union movement and the social-demo-
cratic Partij van de Arbeid playing an important role. Although
the Dutch Minister of Justice denied any communication be-
tween "governments" on the deportation, he conceded that
there had been communication between the "secret services."
Again, Agee's supporters pushed matters as far as a debate in
Parliament, but it was lost.
At Christmas 1977, on his way to visit friends in Hamburg,
Agee was seized by West German border guards, kept overnight
in a cell, and then flung out — with an unnecessary degree of
unpleasantness.
In May 1978, his application to visit Norway for two days was
summarily turned down.
One man clearly cannot present such a threat to the security
services of the entire Western world. The spectre which is
haunting the world's security services is the discovery of the
extent to which they work together on projects directed against
Third World countries, and their own citizens. It will come out if
a systematic analysis is made of the activities and personnel of
the world's largest secret police force, the CIA. As Philip Agee
himself has put it: "Is it paranoia to suggest a conspiracy when
one expulsion follows another, without a single charge of illegal
activity, even in the United States? Yet these actions are de-
signed to silence, disrupt and discredit a critic of his own coun-
try's foreign policy, exercising a right explicitly protected by the
acknowledged covenants on human rights, to which these coun-
tries are signatory. "
Turner's
"Born Again" CIA
by CovertAction Information
Bulletin
Not even a Bicentennial celebration and presidential elections
stopped the legacy of illegal CIA programs from hitting the front
pages. Every new revelation brought forth another wave of criti-
cism and rejection from around the world. Left waiting for the
new President were incomplete Congressional investigations, a
flurry of pending suits for damages, and President Ford's stale
reforms which placed no new limitations on the spy agencies
except to outlaw assassinations.
When Carter promised a fresh team, an open government, and
an end to secret ivory-tower policy making, most Americans did
not think it meant tightening the bolts of government secrecy,
bringing back some of the key men who gave us Vietnam, or
leaving national security questions to the top members of the
Trilateral Commission, an elite foreign policy club about which
most people knew nothing. But it is commonplace for every new
[This article was written in Washington in 1978. for this
book.]
301
302
CovertAction Information Bulletin
Commander-in-Chief, suddenly absorbed in secret briefings,
real-life intrigues and other initiations, to become spy-happy.
Carter's enchantment immediately dissolved any plans to cut
back government secrecy.
One of his first actions was to tighten severely access to infor-
mation about CIA covert operations and plug up potential leaks.
He reduced from 40 to five the number of White House intimates
with access. He was "shocked" to learn how many Members of
Congress received CIA briefings and recommended the number
be slashed to one single joint committee with limited member-
ship (though this is not expected to win Congressional approval).
He ordered an internal review of all the government intelligence-
gathering units, and began bringing in the new team.
At least IS members of the Trilateral Commission were ap-
pointed to Cabinet or other top positions, and at least six others
were selected as presidential advisors — all from the 65 American
Commission members carefully selected by its founder, David
Rockefeller, and Director, Zbigniew Brzezinski. In a nutshell,
the Commission's philosophy presupposes that, in the long run,
the survival of modern capitalism will be best served by active
cooperation rather than indiscriminate competition between the
industrialized powers of North America, Western Europe, and
Japan. The Commission was Carter's introduction to foreign
policy circles which eventually became the target for the heavi-
est injection of Trilateral expertise. It was therefore no surprise
that Carter chose Brzezinski for National Security Affairs Ad-
visor. Secretary of State Cyrus R. Vance was also an activist in
the New York-based organization, a Vietnam War policy-maker
and early advisor to the Carter presidential campaign. Vice Pres-
ident Walter F. Mondale, United Nations Ambassador Andrew
Young, Defense Secretary Harold Brown, Treasury Secretary
W. Michael Blumenthal, former Budget Director Bert Lance,
and Ambassador to Italy Richard Gardner, were some of the
other Trilateral appointees.
After one month Carter's momentum came to an abrupt halt
with the nomination of liberal Theodore Sorensen for CIA Di-
rector (and with the sudden revelation of long-standing CIA pay-
ments to King Hussein, and others, which Carter tried to pre-
vent from being published). After conservatives led a successful
campaign to force Sorensen to withdraw his name. Carter nomi-
nated four-star Admiral Stansfield Turner. A Rhodes Scholar
and former Annapolis classmate of Carter, Turner passed con-
Turner's "Born Again" CIA
303
gressional inspection without any of the scrutiny given Soren-
sen. His military achievements and academic approach im-
pressed liberals and conservatives. He had risen rapidly through
the naval ranks to become commander of NATO forces in
Southern Europe. Early reports showed that the Admiral's
shake-em-up policies had succeeded in the Navy, so why not let
him loose at Langley?
Turner moved briskly, catering to Cabinet members, listening
to the Senate oversight committee, meeting regularly and pri-
vately with Carter, and became the first CIA Director to set up
an office next door to the White House, in the Executive Office
Building. The President told the new CIA chief: "One of the
greatest surprises to me in coming to office is how effective the
CIA is. " What resulted from all the meetings was the most
comprehensive organizational and procedural transformation
since the CIA's creation 30 years ago. Turner proposed that a
director of national intelligence, with centralized control over
the intelligence community, be created with himself in that posi-
tion. Another officer would be named to run the CIA itself. And
so the plan developed.
By May 1977 Carter had abolished the Foreign Intelligence
Advisory Board, an independent body created by Eisenhower in
1956 to review intelligence efforts. Its functions would be re-
sumed by the new Intelligence Oversight Board, a Ford crea-
tion, by the new Inspector General post at the CIA and by con-
gressional oversight committees. Opponents of this move
complained that the abolition of the advisory board eliminated a
necessary independent assessment by persons outside the intel-
ligence sphere; Carter named Thomas L. Farmer, a Washington
lawyer and former CIA man, to chair the Oversight Board.
Carter's internal review was completed by August and be-
came the basis of Executive Order No. 12036, signed January
24, 1978. It set up four new special divisions, streamlined jobs to
avoid overlap and generally made spying a centralized, more
efficient, and allegedly legal government activity.
The first committee of planners and goal-setters is called the
National Security Council (NSC) Policy Review Committee, and
is chaired by Turner. It "defines and establishes priorities for
intelligence consumers," says one official, adding that this body
"will drive the whole process" of setting budget and analysis
priorities. The dirty tricks team sits as the NSC Special Coordi-
nation Committee, a reincarnation of the "40 Committee." It is
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CovertAction Information Bulletin
headed by Brzezinski and recommends and approves all covert
operations and other sensitive jobs conducted by the govern-
ment, including the FBI. It is the first such body designed to
coordinate overall government counterintelligence activities.
The advisory panel, called the National Foreign Intelligence
Board, began functioning in November 1977 to advise Turner on
production, coordination and budgets. In addition to Turner and
cabinet secretaries from State, Defense and Justice, officials
from the Energy Department, Defense Intelligence Agency,
FBI, National Reconnaissance Office, and the National Security
Agency also belong. The coordinators work at the National In-
telligence Tasking Center, chaired by Turner, and are responsi-
ble for peacetime assignments to all the intelligence agencies. It
is run by Lt. Gen. Frank A. Camm, a former Army Engineers
officer, but the Defense Secretary can take over by presidential
order in times of war or crisis. Turner established the brain trust
at the National Foreign Assessment Center, run by another Tri-
lateral Commission member, Robert Bowie, who was once a key
advisor to John Foster Dulles, and more recently a professor at
Harvard. The center is staffed by 1,200 intelligence analysts
from the CIA and a group of high-ranking estimate specialists
who provide policy makers with the major trends abroad that
affect U.S. foreign and economic policies.
Membership in all these special committees varies some, but
the core clique includes Brzezinski, Turner, Vance, Brown,
Mondale and Blumenthal. (A key element of Brzezinski's Trila-
teral plan included reorganizing the NSC to include the Secre-
tary of the Treasury, who had previously been excluded from its
deliberations.)
Labeled Carter's biggest sweep was handing over the highly-
centralized power and leadership to the CIA Director, who now
assigns tasks, reviews results, and controls budgets over not
only the CIA, but also the intelligence sections of the Army,
Navy and Air Force, the National Reconnaissance Office, Trea-
sury Department intelligence, Drug Enforcement Agency intelli-
gence. National Security Agency, Defense Intelligence Agency,
research and development divisions of the Energy Department,
and even the counterintelligence branch of the FBI. Turner
chairs the four decision-making bodies and acts as the intelli-
gence community's principal spokesperson to Congress, the
news media, and the public. He is also the first CIA Director to
sit in on all cabinet meetings. When Turner was granted power
Turner's "Born Again ' ' CIA
305
to decide on the final budgets, he reportedly said, "He who has
the budget, has the golden rule." Veto over the budget allows
Turner to halt or nurture programs as he wishes, even if the
money goes through the Defense Department. This job alone
involves oversight and control of between seven and twelve
billion dollars annually.
Operational control and hire-fire powers still remain with the
heads of the relevant agencies, and each continues to maintain
an independent analytical capability, to assure dissenting views
and competition. Competition is still a real phenomenon and
minor rifts between Defense Secretary Harold Brown and Tur-
ner, and between Turner and Secretary of State Vance, have
already surfaced. To give himself some leverage. Brown ap-
pointed a retired four-star Admiral, a former CIA official who
served as Deputy to CIA Director George Bush. Admiral Daniel
J. Murphy, now Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Policy
is in charge of intelligence and counterintelligence, but his key
task is to work with Turner, a close friend, on budgeting and
Pentagon assignments. For the first time, Pentagon intelligence
gathering has been coordinated under the Defense Secretary and
one person is organizing the various strands of data from such
offices as the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Secur-
ity Agency, the Defense Mapping Agency, the National Recon-
naissance Office, as well as the Office of International Security
Affairs, yet another Pentagon division that deals with strategic
arms talks, NATO, and defense-related diplomatic issues.
Brown was understandably seeking to exert his own power in
the intelligence community after Turner successfully gained
control of most functions, despite Brown's vigorous objections.
Murphy is "considered a very strong leader who's able to hold
his own in the bureaucracy. He's a strong type, and that's ob-
viously why Brown needs him," said another source to a New
York Times reporter.
Turner took charge of the CIA at a critical period in history.
Public exposure of those accustomed to operating in the dark,
the rapid turnover in directors (five in less than five years), half-
prescribed reforms and the rumored reorganization plans had
repercussions in the nervous Agency, especially in its operations
arm. Robert D. (Rusty) Williams, hired by Turner from Stanford
Research Institute to investigate the Directorate for Operations,
agreed with the CIA's own studies; the Operations division was
overstaffed and top-heavy with senior grade officers. During the
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Covert Action Information Bulletin
summer Turner carefully prepared a plan with personnel and
house psychologists to minimize the turbulence of eliminating
820 operations positions out of 4,730. He had inherited recom-
mendations for more drastic cuts, but decided that instead of
getting rid of 1 ,400 employees in six to eight years, 800 posi-
tions, many unfilled at the time, and many at headquarters,
could be eliminated over two years. Operations personnel had
already been trimmed down from 8,000 at the peak of the Viet-
nam War, and Schlesinger had begun the scale-down in 1973
when he eliminated 2,000 positions throughout the Agency.
Most of the victims of the "October massacre" were veteran
clandestine operatives notified by a two-sentence mimeographed
form letter signed by William W. Wells, head of Operations. The
open resentments were apparently unexpected by Turner, and
they tended to exaggerate the move to draw even more attention
to the Director's "ruthless" military style. Calling those who
leaked their pity to reporters "crybabies," for which he later
semi-apologized, Turner only aggravated more employees,
many of whom had worked for the CIA for several decades. In
fact, only 45 people were fired outright, from the first batch of
212 notices. Others have been retired and the CIA personnel
office was looking for government jobs for the rest. (Of course,
as former Director William Colby recently said on a radio inter-
view, "They could always write books.")
There were thirteen major overseas positions affected, includ-
ing Chiefs of Station in Germany, Austria, Norway, Sweden,
Luxembourg, Spain, Switzerland, Canada, Australia and Japan.
Three Chiefs came home from Latin America to retire. By the
end of 1978 almost 20 percent of the operations branch will
reincarnate as authors, lecture-circuit pros, local police chiefs,
foreign agents, lobbyists, whistle-blowers, private corporate
spies, and many will join the strident Association of Former
Intelligence Officers (AFIO), the club for burned-out spies.
The firings may have shaken morale, but there were several
warnings. The first tipoff to the cuts occurred in July when Dep-
uty Director E. Henry Knoche suddenly resigned after 24 years'
service, over disagreement with Turner's policies. At the same
time, reports that Turner was seeking early retirements for many
senior operations officers were disingenuously denied: "There
are no plans for forced retirement or removals of any top CIA
officials, there are no plans for major changes in the CIA organi-
zation at this time," Turner stated. But word got out in August,
Turner's "Born Again" CIA
307
and by October eight-page memos circulated, detailing the cri-
teria used for selection for the list.
Two months after the dismissal notices went to the first 200
senior members, the top clandestine officers began receiving
them as well. By late December, William W. Wells, the signer of
the controversial notices, had himself retired. Knoche's deputy,
Louis Latham, resigned under pressure; then Wells' top assist-
ant, the legendary and elusive Cord Meyer, Jr. , was ousted, as
was Theodore Shackley, his other top deputy, and Campbell
James, another Company legend. These removals were seen as
Turner's attempt to break up remnants of the "old boy net-
work" of senior operatives. A former aide to Turner summed up
his motivations this way: "He is very uncomfortable with their
[the clandestine branch] basic uncontrollability. He doesn't like
their fine clothes and accents, their Cosmos and Yale and
Georgetown clubs. They're simply not good sailors. He finds
them sneeringly elliptical. It drives him crazy. He just can't get
hold of this maddening quicksilver."
"Wild Willy" Wells and Shackley were considered two of the
CIA's top clandestine operators. Wells was Station Chief in To-
kyo and Hong Kong and once headed the CIA's European oper-
ations division. Shackley directed the secret war in Laos, and
was actively involved in CIA operations in Vietnam, during the
Cuban missile crisis, and in Berlin. Campbell James, a distant
relative of Teddy Roosevelt, was also a prime operative in Laos.
Cord Meyer, Jr., a much-decorated CIA officer, recently was
Station Chief in London after many years coordinating, among
other things, the Agency's infiltration and manipulation of the
National Student Association.
Wells was replaced by John N. McMahon, who was acting
deputy for intelligence. McMahon is a 26-year CIA veteran
whose specialty in the past had been in the area of science and
technology. Because he came up from the bottom on the scien-
tific side of the CIA, it fueled the theory that Turner was ex-
panding technological spying and cutting back on human intelli-
gence gathering. In fact, McMahon does have experience in
operations from the years he spent developing technological ex-
otics for CIA covert actions. He's known as a superb manager,
and according to one colleague, "He'll have the Directorate of
Operations eating out of his hands in sixty days. ' '
Turner placed John Koehler at the Directorate for Resource
Management, a branch designed to supervise the budget, esti-
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CovertAction Information Bulletin
mated at more than $800 million a year; Leslie Dirks is the CIA's
new deputy for Science and Technology ; and John F. Blake was
chosen as Deputy for Administration.
Due to Turner's expanded role, the new Deputy Director now
has day-to-day operational control over the CIA. He is Frank
Carlucci, imported for the job from the U.S. Embassy in Portu-
gal, a veteran civil servant who was given full status as stand-in
for Turner at White House and NSC meetings and who receives
intelligence evaluations formerly limited to the Admiral. Carter
considered Carlucci for several other major appointments, but
abandoned plans when Democrats in Congress complained of
his many high positions in the Nixon administration. His foreign
service career began in 1956 in Johannesburg, until 1959, the
Belgian Congo until 1964, Zanzibar for a year, Brazil until 1969,
and back home to Nixon's Office of Economic Opportunity. In
1971 he was assistant Director of the Office of Management and
Budget. In 1972 Nixon moved him to HEW, where he remained
until 1975, when he was abruptly sent off as Ambassador to
Lisbon amidst the throes of the battle between communists and
socialists. He won praise for opposing Henry Kissinger's pro-
posal to withdraw American support from the Lisbon regime
when it seemed for a time that communists were winning. But
Democrats only routinely inquired into Carlucci's sensitive past
when it came time for confirmation in Congress. They quickly
voted in Committee to confirm, 10-0. Carlucci replaced Jack
Blake, a career CIA officer who was acting Deputy Director
since July 1977, after Knoche's resignation.
Although Carlucci, 47, is expected to smooth ruffled feathers
at the CIA, there is doubt that the Agency will be able to adjust
abruptly to the new procedures — if they want to. According to
one victim of the layoffs, despite all the media exposure of the
CIA, the organization remains essentially unchanged. No matter
who rules, says Donald S. Jordan, it's run by elitists, most of
whom are contemptuous of "idiots" in the unwashed general
public and who are willing to lie to Congress whenever neces-
sary. Appalled at the indifference he observed among high-level
officers, Jordan said that fabricated information goes into CIA
files regularly. He remembers one CIA agent justifying his imag-
inative report to headquarters: "OK, so some of it is made up,
so what? So it really doesn't hurt. It'll increase our budget, we'll
get a few more people." Jordan is a 26-year veteran in the do-
mestic service as a public representative.
Turner's "Born Again" CIA
He thinks he was asked to leave because he was listed in the
potential whistle-blowers file. The 57-year-old officer claims CIA
"super-grades" and high-level appointees maintain one set of
legitimate personnel records and another set on complainers.
It's used to control, harass and oust employees who disagree or
criticize their bosses, he said. Jordan was one of the first officers
to comply with a new CIA regulation requiring employees to
report possible wrongdoing. His grievances were ignored, he
says, and the Inspector General in charge began to cover up the
problems in domestic activities which he reported. His attempts
to inform the Admiral met with no response. According to Jor-
dan, most employees won't change their thinking, and their main
concern with the Agency is that it was "caught" and that regula-
tions don't mean anything.
Indeed, an administrative official at the CIA said "there's a lot
of bureaucratic ass-covering that goes on when guys write long-
range stuff. They don't want to be wrong, so they tend to be glib
and platitudinous." According to Newsweek, the CIA even pre-
pared a five-year plan in 1977 with one solution to all the scrutiny
and criticism: "We are dealing with our cover impediments by
creating a truly clandestine corps of operations officers," notes
one section of the ambitious plan. "[This will be] an extremely
delicate undertaking with many complex operations and support
ramifications that will require adroit handling by our most expe-
rienced people."
Those who interpreted Turner's housecleaning to reflect the
downgrading of covert actions declared it "the end of an era" of
secret spies. But epitaphs are premature, as Turner himself con-
tends: "We have not by any means abandoned covert action . . .
it does continue . . . I'm dedicated to preserving the capability to
turn to political action when it suits the purpose and when prop-
erly authorized." Human spying operations "will continue to be
an absolutely essential arrow in our quiver." From 1961 to 1976
roughly 900 major covert operations were carried out, and sev-
eral thousand smaller projects. Nothing invites tombstone in-
scriptions yet; in fact the traditional structure of the CIA, in-
cluding the trimmed-down operations branch, has only been
reconstructed. And like a bom-again Christian, it will carry for-
ward with more fervor than ever before.
The Agency is not only preserving its options on covert ac-
tion; it is also struggling to keep knowledge of these activities
from the State Department. In October 1977, after considerable
MO
CovertAction Information Bulletin
negotiations between the Agency and State, President Carter
had published an Order stating that all Ambassadors have the
authority to review all message traffic involving U.S. personnel
under their jurisdiction. Admiral Turner and Secretary Vance
sent out identical "guidelines" to their people, indicating that
Ambassadors had the right to be kept informed of Agency activ-
ity, but Turner simultaneously sent an additional directive to his
Station Chiefs prohibiting communication of details of covert
operations and administrative procedures. The dispute contin-
ues, and the Ambassadorial corps is reportedly quite unhappy
over the present state of affairs.
New division titles, deputies, and authority lines haven't af-
fected intelligence-gathering ratios. Approximately 50 percent
of intelligence-gathering comes from open sources, such as
newspapers, films and speeches. The source for another 40 per-
cent is technological devices such as satellites, high-speed spy
planes, cameras, eavesdropping devices and other gadgets. The
remaining ten percent has historically been dependent on human
information collectors. The human resources, which former
Deputy Director Lt. Gen.- Vernon Walters calls "the most vital
part because it alone can reveal intentions," are still critical
requirements. Intentions are precisely what's on today's
agenda. Since the government knows who has how many of
what, the real priority is focusing on foreign government plans
for those capabilities. Of those human intelligence (HUMINT)
collectors, about one-third are scattered around the world while
the remainder play support roles at home. The CIA still has
about 6,000 employees outside Langley and about 1 ,400 at head-
quarters. Clandestine activities do not require huge bureaucra-
cies; in fact they can severely handicap operations. Not only do
covert capabilities remain, but as Turner recently said, "We are
retaining a paramilitary capability on stand-by as part of our
covert action kit." According to Newsweek, this secret paramili-
tary unit has at least 50 members.
Turner's moves add more red tape, but with authorization all
covert action can continue. Turner is said to have told one West-
ern European Chief of Station that "the only difference now is
that all covert operations henceforth will be conducted legally."
Other significant changes occurred in the analytical arm of the
CIA, which must evaluate and synthesize the information col-
lected by the Operations arm. Information by itself is not intelli-
gence, and the analysts in the intelligence community must ex-
Turner's ' 'Born Again ' ' CIA
Ml
pand and improve the "product." The CIA in particular hopes
to rejuvenate its relationships with American academicians by
allowing more flow of information to leave the CIA. Foreign
policy requirements will make more use of diplomatic weapons
requiring more information on subjects such as food, popula-
tion, climate, culture, and economics. More and more reports
are being made public: "I'm just so proud of what we have
contributed in the past nine months to the public debate on
major issues," says Turner. "Look at this morning's newspa-
pers, there's a long story on Soviet oil-extraction problems. We
triggered that last April by releasing a study on Soviet oil."
The CIA's think tank "is getting more sophisticated," said
Dennis Berend, assistant public affairs officer. "There are
enough people here with doctorate degrees, in any field you can
name, to staff a university. You need a Master's degree to get a
job in some areas," he adds. Reflecting the academic disciplines
that contribute to the Agency's analytical output are the offices
of economic research, scientific intelligence, strategy research
(arms and military preparedness), computer science and
geography-cartography .
In recent years, a major shift in focus has been from military
analysis to economic research in recognition of the broad impact
of economic conditions on the political community. Recent titles
of CIA studies include: "World Steel Market — Continued Trou-
ble Ahead"; "China — 1977 Midyear Grain Outlook"; "Com-
munist Aid to the Less Developed Countries of the Free World,
1976"; and "International and Transnational Terrorism — Diag-
nosis and Prognosis." The increasing emphasis on analyses led
to the establishment of the National Foreign Assessment Cen-
ter, headed by Trilateral Commission member Robert Bowie,
which will sift analyses from all the agencies.
Carter is said to be making heavy demands on the CIA to
improve its predictions and analysis of economic and political
developments. And one CIA analyst complained, "The facts
aren't always exciting enough for Stan [Turner]; he orders the
intelligence estimates to be jazzed up," in order to please the
President.
Turner is indeed jazzing up everything at the CIA, and it has
been most notable in its public relations. Turner is accepting
interviews, releasing inside photos of the headquarters building,
writing opinion columns in newspapers, and generally trying to
leave the impression that the CIA has recuperated fast. He logi-
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CovertAction Information Bulletin
cally counters every criticism and smoothly glosses over rumors
of low morale, lousy predictions and costly waste. Former Dep-
uty Director Ray S. Cline has said, "The Central Intelligence
Agency, with the famous acronym that has become a worldwide
public relations liability, should cease to exist. . . . Realism
suggests we will do better with some new name." Cline suggests
something like Central Intelligence for Foreign Affairs Research
(CIFAR). This step, while controversial, is expected to come to
be, but Cline should know that public relations requirements are
not that simple. On the one hand Turner must convince critics
that the Agency has changed its methods, and on the other hand
he must assure supporters that the CIA has not relinquished its
covert capabilities.
The CIA must attract and recruit scholars and students while
at the same time, reassure foreign intelligence agencies that it is
still able to keep a secret. Its relations with the higher education
community are expanding, despite public outcry over operations
like MKULTRA, and the Agency statistics support its claims.
They report that job inquiries are at a high level. In 1976 the CIA
had 37,000 inquiries for 1,100 vacancies. CIA recruiters still
vigorously tour college campuses, and one school. Bowling
Green University, nominated the Agency's recruiting officer as
Recruiter of the Year.
A surprising amount of media coverage has been supportive,
focusing now on the importance of covert action and criticizing
"hyper-suspicious investigative reporters' ' of trying to endanger
national security. An enormous public relations effort to end the
season of attack on the CIA once and for all and "let them get
back to work" has left public criticism from civil liberties and
other watchdog public interest forces on the back pages. The
backlash is undoubtedly orchestrated by the Agency as much as
possible — likely one of its most urgent covert operations ever
carried out and, in direct violation of its charter, right here in
America — as both major columnists and Congressional over-
sight spokespersons have begun spreading fears of the effects of
criticism and complaints, while launching an educational cam-
paign on the importance of secrecy. During recent hearings on
CIA ties to journalists, it was revealed that the CIA had become
a professional opinion molder and that such operations were
vital for "the national interest." Ray Cline testified that CIA-
press relations should not be eliminated; after all, said the for-
mer Deputy Director with a straight face, "the First Amendment
is only an amendment."
Turner's "Born Again" CIA
According to the Church Committee, in February 1976 fifty
American journalists were working for the CIA. Carl Bernstein
wrote in Rolling Stone that "more than 400 American journalists
... in the past 25 years have secretly carried out assignments for
the CIA," according to CIA documents. For thirty years the
CIA has been engaged in an unremitting, though largely unre-
cognized, effort to shape foreign opinion in support of U.S.
policy abroad. American journalists were just one part of its
propaganda campaign, and its efforts contributed to distortion of
the news at home as well as abroad. Why are we to believe it has
ended?
The CIA has at various times owned or subsidized more than
SO newspapers, news services, radio stations, periodicals and
other communications entities, sometimes in the U.S. but
mostly overseas. Another dozen foreign-based news organiza-
tions, not CIA-financed, were infiltrated by paid CIA agents.
Nearly a dozen American publishing houses, including some of
the most prominent names in the industry, have printed at least a
score of the more than 250 English-language books financed or
produced by the CIA since the early 1950s, in many cases with-
out being aware cf the Agency involvement. A substantial num-
ber of the bogus news stories planted abroad were published as
genuine in the United States, a phenomenon the CIA calls
"blowback," "replay" or "domestic fallout." And Carter's
rules don't even attempt to change that game. The Agency
warns diplomats and other key officials to ignore news stories
the CIA has planted overseas. But how is the public to sift out
the lies and dis-information? Some CIA propaganda efforts, es-
pecially during the Vietnam War, were set in motion specifically
for U.S. consumption.
All these methods require secrecy and Carter's changes have
only strengthened that ingredient. The President has stated in
the new Executive Order that many of "the documents that
implement this Order will be classified because of the sensitivity
of the information and its relation to national security," but he
promises they will be consistent with the Order. There is, of
course, no logical reason to believe this, any more than there
was to believe Richard Nixon or John Mitchell in the heyday of
their promises. This is especially true because the actual imple-
mentation of the Order is the exclusive dominion of the intelli-
gence community, a dilemma-analogous to the illogic of suppos-
ing that a police department can impartially rule in cases
involving charges of police brutality. Contrary to Carter's cam-
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CovertAction Information Bulletin
paign rhetoric, his rules for classification only perpetuate the
secrecy mania of the federal government. They do not reduce
the number of people and agencies authorized to classify infor-
mation, nor shorten the period during which secrets will be kept.
Indeed, the ACLU and other groups contend that Carter's
changes are a step backward from the inadequate restrictions of
the Ford administration and in several areas make Nixon's rules
seem more lenient. New restrictions on spying operations re-
quire case-by-case approval by the Attorney General and can be
carried out if the targeted person or organization is believed to
be acting as an agent for a foreign power. Then there are the
exceptions. It's considered "legal" by the Agency to spy on
individuals who might reveal classified information, or former
spies, or potential recruits, or those who are in contact with
someone who is believed to be a foreign agent, or in contact with
someone who is the subject of a foreign intelligence or counter-
intelligence investigation. Use of warrantless electronic surveil-
lance is also authorized in such cases, even though the only
Federal appeals court to rule on the subject has condemned the
practice as unconstitutional, and the Senate rejected authorizing
legislation by a resounding 95-1 vote. The term "agent of a
foreign power" is not denned in any way in the Order and count-
less other loopholes remain.
All the "prohibitions," too, can still be undertaken "legally,"
so long as they have high Executive approval, even assassina-
tion, which is the only activity absolutely "prohibited" by the
Executive Order. As Admiral Turner points out with bizarre
logic, "I am categorically prohibited from doing it (assassina-
tions). If we were in some extremis situation where it was justi-
fied to take human life for a good cause, like a hijacking, why, at
least we could get the President to make an exception. ' '
The Order does not prohibit intelligence agencies from making
use of reporters, teachers, students, clergy, or any other specific
group of Americans, although it suggests outright manipulation
is bad manners. The Order still permits the channeling of money
to political factions in foreign countries and the use of opera-
tives to try to destabilize foreign governments.
Congressional legislation is expected to add restrictions on the
agencies through the charter which is due to be completed by
mid- 1978. Carter's Executive Order, even after a lot of input
from the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the new
House Select Committee (whose staff head is a former CIA
Turner's "Born Again" CI A
M5
officer), does not give Congress veto power over any plans for
covert operations, and the agencies are only required to inform
the committees "in timely fashion," which Congressional mem-
bers can just hope means before takeoff, not after a crash land-
ing. Oversight committee members complacently assure us their
information about operations and plans of the various agencies
in the intelligence community is current and adequate.
One future battle remains around the National Security
Agency, which was created by presidential directive and has no
legislative sanction whatsoever. A second battle looming is that
the American public still has no budget or employment figures
for the vast intelligence-gathering network of the U.S. govern-
ment. It is estimated at $7 to $12 billion annually embracing
about 200,000 employees with around 40,000 of these forming a
core group.
Many Americans still don't realize the sheer size and com-
plexity of the other agencies. For example, the CIA is estimated
to spend in excess of $800 million annually, while the intelli-
gence branch of the Treasury Department spends an estimated
$926 million annually. The National Security Agency budget is
believed to be much more, approximately $1.3 billion a year, and
its highly technological spying apparatus on American soil and
around the globe still holds the biggest secrets of all. The mili-
tary branches are by far the largest without even a reliable esti-
mated budget. It is even possible that there are other agencies
we don't yet know exist.
The Central Intelligence Agency is but one branch of the U.S.
intelligence community, and that community is only one very
deeply-rooted tree in the enormous forest constituting the mili-
tary-industrial establishment, that continuously rips away large
chunks of the government budget from the social areas desper-
ately requiring attention, including public health, welfare, unem-
ployment, housing and education.
As Congressman Otis Pike pointed out, it's not worth it;
"we're talking about a tired middle-aged bureaucracy and we
should be rubbing their noses in the billions they have spent to
make bad calls on major events." In addition to these billions of
dollars is the cost in human lives, not only as the direct result of
thousands of CIA covert actions, but as a result of the monstros-
ities the CIA left behind. Over one hundred foreign intelligence
agencies, a vast majority of which the CIA created and/or nur-
tured, are gears in political machines the United States has
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Covert Action Information Bulletin
propped up for its own economic needs. The CIA has had to
initiate new operations and projects just to monitor its own left-
overs, like Iran's SAVAK, the Korean CIA and the Cuban exile
groups. American-made equipment has been used for many
years by officers trained in the U.S. by U.S. agencies in U.S.-
created torture techniques. When Turner said the work of the
CIA "will be legal and consistent with American values," to
which and to whose values does he refer? Does our intelligence
community represent American values? Does it function in the
interests of the American people?
Carter, Turner, and the Trilateral Commission indeed repre-
sent a system of values — but they are the values of corporate
capitalism and a warmed-over Western hegemonism. The influ-
ence of the multinationals is primary, and the political leaders
have discovered that the CIA and other intelligence forces have
been years ahead of them in recognizing the preference for co-
operation over competition among the industrialized non-social-
ist nations. We have already seen the new Trilateral cooperation
in action when France intervened in the fight for the Western
Sahara and helped put down the uprising in Shaba province in
Zaire. We've seen cooperative action in southern Africa be-
tween Britain, Germany and Israel. But the sharing strategy is
not always popular, or economical. Cooperation has been a
struggle for the U.S. government which had to be pressured to
purchase European military equipment as well as sell its own
new lines, while the conflict over trade balances has been sharp-
est between the U.S. and Japan.
Another obvious example is the deportation campaign against
Philip Agee. Despite protestations to the contrary by the nations
involved — the United Kingdom, France, West Germany, and
the Netherlands, as well as the United States — no one seriously
believes that U.S. prompting was not behind the moves.
The chief surprise to date of the Carter policy is its emphasis
on human rights. This messianic component has never been so
purely stated since Woodrow Wilson's time. Human rights, said
Mr. Carter in early 1977, would be the "backbone of our foreign
policy." Restoring America's role as a "light unto nations,"
Carter hopes to achieve — in political terms — a Second Coming.
Although U.S. military and/or economic aid was cut to Argen-
tina and Uruguay because of human rights abuses in those na-
tions, the same moral criterion was selectively used or simply
not applicable to "strategically-placed allies" like South Korea,
Turner's "Born Again" CIA
M7
Indonesia, the Philippines, Iran, Brazil, and other nations that
consistently violate human rights. These same locales, where
the CIA has bred its own Frankenstein police and security ser-
vices, still maintain close working relationships with the CIA.
NATO is obviously a top priority for the Trilateral thinkers on
the Carter team. Commander of NATO General Alexander
Haig said in an interview in early January 1978, "NATO is
increasingly affected by threats outside the alliance's boundaries
. . . the West has to take a collective political decision." The
growth of "Eurocommunism," as in Italy, France, and Spain,
and to some extent Greece and Turkey, could not be ignored by
the administration. Asked if covert action was ruled out in Italy,
Zbigniew Brzezinski has said, "I'm not going to make any blan-
ket promises as to what we might or might not do." And Carter
himself antagonized millions of Europeans by overtly threaten-
ing the French and Italian Socialists over possible ties with the
Communists.
Haig also defended the neutron bomb as "a logical moderniza-
tion step in terms of military needs," despite the fact that sev-
eral nations in NATO oppose the weapon. Haig added that
NATO forces "must be armed with regional military capabilities
which could be employed as deterrent forces to prevent the
escalation of Third World dynamics into major conflicts." In-
deed, those "Third World dynamics" are another priority. De-
spite the CIA's "victories" for U.S. policy in Guatemala, Guy-
ana, Zaire, Indonesia, Iran, Uruguay and Chile (among others),
U.S. policy makers are faced with an ever-expanding list of CIA
"losses" including Cuba, Angola, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique,
Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Jamaica. If liberation movements
continue to challenge the decaying leaderships that are backed
up by the Western world, the administration will need more
popular support for some sort of intervention, be it small covert
operations teams or economic pressure. Thus the re-creation of
the emotive and bogus external threat wrapped in the Soviet or
Cuban flag or fear of terrorism.
U.S. leaders seem to have finally agreed that the heavy-
handed direct military intervention of the Sixties did not contrib-
ute to America's world image and only injured the U.S. corpo-
rate world strategy, as did certain zealous CIA actions. Now
they'll follow the lead of the multinational perspective. How-
ever bruised, the American corporate empire must try to keep
itself afloat and it clearly cannot choose to become progressively
Covert Action Information Bulletin
isolated from world affairs. Its needs will always require covert
action and intervention in the internal affairs of other nations.
To this the people of the United States must continue to shout
no. Attempts to convince the public that these intelligence activ-
ities are no longer needed or used on anything but a minimal
scale cannot be accepted as sincere. Rest assured that deep in its
heart, the born-again CIA still lusts after power and influence.
ABOUT PHILIP AGEE
PHILIP AGEE, who wrote the Introduction and several articles for this book,
attended Jesuit high school in Tampa, Florida, and after graduating with honors
from Notre Dame, joined the CIA in early 19S7. He now holds the unchallenged
title as Number One Nemesis of his former "Company." After 12 years in the
Agency, he resigned in 1969, having spent ten years as a covert operations
officer in Uruguay, Ecuador and Mexico. Soon afterward he began to recon-
struct in detail the dirty tricks of his former employers. By 1975 his book, Inside
the Company: CIA Diary, was completed. It sent shock waves throughout the
world because Agee decided not only to tell all, but also to name all. He said we
cannot separate what the CIA does from who does it.
It is Agee's insistence on placing moral responsibility in the laps of the
individual perpetrators which most agitates CIA Headquarters and disrupts its
secret operations. This book demonstrates that seven years abroad has not
exhausted either his desire or his ability to expose the Company. This book, he
states, is even more important than the first.
ABOUT LOUIS WOLF
LOUIS WOLF was bom in Philadelphia in 1940, and is a graduate of Goddard
College. After a brief stint with a job training program for inner-city Blacks in
Indianapolis, he performed alternate service as a conscientious objector with
International Voluntary Services, Inc. , in Laos. He lived in Asia for nine years,
six as a correspondent for Dispatch News Service International, in Laos and the
Philippines. He then spent three years in Europe, recently as a correspondent for
Transnational Features Service. At present he resides in Washington, D.C.
For the past several years he has been a virtual resident of the Official
Publications Room of the British Museum in London and the Central Research
Room of the National Archives in Washington, researching the American intel-
ligence community, and has published articles in various magazines and jour-
nals. As Philip Agee says, "Lou's the best there is at this kind of research."
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